# Languages



## Skroy

Hello! So, what languages do you guys speak and/or write in? 

I'm fluent in the English language obviously but sometimes I mix up definitions of certain words. I know how to speak and write in French as well, though not as much. In fact, I'm still having difficulty verbally communicating in French whereas my writing and reading skills are fairly decent (but they still need a lot of improvement).

(Now to translate this for fun _and_ for practice:

Salut! Quelles langues est-ce que vous vous parlez et/ou écrivez?

Je suis coulant en langue anglais évidemment, mais parfois j'encore confuse les definitions des mots particuliéres. Je comprend comment parler et écrire en français aussi, mais ce n'est pas assez. En fait, j'ai encore de diffculté à communiquer en français oralement, alors que mes capacités en écriture et lecture sont assez décents (mais ils ont encore besoin beaucoup d'amélioration).

...Ugh, that translation definitely needs a lot of work...)


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## IcySapphire

I speak:

--English (My name is IcySapphire)
--Spanish (Me llamo IcySapphire)
--a little Japanese (Watashi wa IcySapphire)


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## Murkrow

I'm fluent is English and Welsh and am awaiting exam results for French, German and Latin. I think I'm pretty good at French, but if I don't think about it for a while I tend to forget a lot.

I know I've failed German and Latin though D: I only know very basic German and I can only translate Latin if I know generally what's going on anyway, and then only if I'm lucky.


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## Shiny Grimer

This will be fun~

I am a native speaker of Spanish. Aunque el espanol es mi primer lenguaje, no lo he estudiado mucho y entonces hago muchos errores cuando escribiendo. He empesado a aprender mas sobre el espanol, pero todavia queda mucho a saber. (although spanish is my first language, I haven't studied it much and so I make a lot of errors while writing. I've started to learn more abotu spanish, but there's still a lot to know.)

I consider English my second native language. I know it much better than Spanish (and better than most native anglophones; I've met quite a few people who just use commas in place of semi-colons) and I think that its history is fascinating. I wish I could study Old English. I love seeing how it's changed.

I study French. Je n'etudie pas beaucoup le Francais, mais je sais sufficient pour parler aux francophones. Je suis allee a Montreal et parlee francais avec les gens. Je sais ou vont les accents, mais je ne veux pas ouvrier le keyboard francais. (I don't study French a lot, but I know enough to speak with Francophones. I went to Montreal and spoke French with the people. I know where the accents go, but I don't want to open the French keyboard. [because I'm lazy]).

I study Russian. Русский язык очень красивый язык. Я должен изучать, но я ленивая. Я люблю русские идиоми. Я на этом кошку съела. (Russian is a very beautiful language. I should study, but I'm lazy. I love Russian idioms. I ate the cat on it/ I know a lot about it [I don't actually know a lot about Russian idioms]).

I'd like to study Hindi, Icelandic, and a bunch of other languages as well, but Russian and French are the ones I've advanced most in.

My user title (الْقَلَمُ مَكْسُوْر) means "The pen is broken", if you must know. :p


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## Jolty

Lol the only one I speak fluently is English

I know bits of French, German, Spanish and Swedish and can read a teeny bit of Japanese


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## Zuu

My native language is English, I can bludgeon my way through a small amount of Spanish, and I've taken two years of Latin. 

Languages I am interested in: Swedish, Russian, Japanese.


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## Dewgong

日本語を話します。

jag talar svenska.

(bigger interest in swedish over japanese at this point.)


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## Bluberry Bat

Slechts een klein beetje van het Nederlands. En ik ben waarschijnlijk te maken een veel van fouten. Zo ja, ik ben toch leren.
("Only a little bit of Dutch, and I'm probably making a lot of mistakes. So yes, I'm still learning." I also have to double-check sentence structure and a few words with Google Translator so I won't call it a second language yet or anything. :/ )
I'd also very much like to learn to read Japanese, if only so I can import games and suchlike~


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## Zuu

Dewgong said:


> 日本語を話します。
> 
> jag talar svenska.
> 
> (bigger interest in swedish over japanese at this point.)


it's awesome, isn't it? I wish I had some way to learn properly.


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## Dewgong

indeed. it's a pretty awesome language, it's fun too. i'm having more fun with that, and learning at a way faster pace than i did japanese.

hmm..


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## Storm Earth and Fire

Well Mandarin is my first language, but I essentially learned it alongside English.

I studied Spanish through middle school and high school, but I'm rather bad at it now.

Understanding (and speaking) a bit of Japanese is a given considering how much anime I watch, and more recently, visual novels.

Besides that, I can read a little Cyrillic, and know random words in a bunch of languages.


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## Vladimir Putin's LJ

Well, it's a bit confusing for me, but my mother's Portuguese, my dad's Dutch and I live in the French part of Belgium so I'm fluent in all of those. I can write French and Dutch decently but I make mistakes because I can't really be bothered.
My parents spoke English with each other so I picked that up too. I got better at it in school later on.

The only language I really want to learn in Russian, so I'd probably better start getting my arse into gear by, I don't know, learning the Cyrillic alphabet I guess. I'd quite like to learn German and since I'm fluent in Dutch I sort of understand it already, I just want  to be able to speak it. Screw what my mother says, it's a nice language

EDIT: Skroy, your French translation was very good! I only see a couple of grammar issues (word placement and some English influence mostly) but they're not that important.


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## goldenquagsire

Obviously, I'm fluent in English. I can also ascertain that I am reasonably proficient in German, having spent three days by myself in Cologne. :D

My French is fairly crappy, and I'll probably have forgotten most of it by the end of summer. I'm not taking it for A-level, so yeah. :(


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## Music Dragon

I'm fluent in Swedish and English, and I speak a tiny bit of French. I've been studying Mandarin for about a year, though that doesn't get you very far.


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## Tarvos

L'il Dwagie said:


> Slechts een klein beetje van het Nederlands. En ik ben waarschijnlijk te maken een veel van fouten. Zo ja, ik ben toch leren.
> ("Only a little bit of Dutch, and I'm probably making a lot of mistakes. So yes, I'm still learning." I also have to double-check sentence structure and a few words with Google Translator so I won't call it a second language yet or anything. :/ )
> I'd also very much like to learn to read Japanese, if only so I can import games and suchlike~


Hahaha your grammar is pretty awful, but keep going!

I speak fluent Dutch and English, and have basic French and German. I can also read some Latin (having studied that for five years, and French/German for four years respectively).


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## DonKarasuMan

Fluent in English and Cantonese Chinese; currently learning (/grasping) Mandarin Chinese and doing a Japanese course at school. Also interested in taking French in the near future.


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## Skroy

Vladimir Putin's LJ said:


> EDIT: Skroy, your French translation was very good! I only see a couple of grammar issues (word placement and some English influence mostly) but they're not that important.


Out of the four aspects I'm marked on in French class (l'oral, l'écriture, la lecture et l'écoute), my writing is the best so I'm not too worried about it. But I do have this habit of translating every phrase in the literal sense.


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## Lars The Turtwig

L'il Dwagie said:


> Slechts een klein beetje van het Nederlands. En ik ben waarschijnlijk te maken een veel van fouten. Zo ja, ik ben toch leren.
> ("Only a little bit of Dutch, and I'm probably making a lot of mistakes. So yes, I'm still learning." I also have to double-check sentence structure and a few words with Google Translator so I won't call it a second language yet or anything. :/ )
> I'd also very much like to learn to read Japanese, if only so I can import games and suchlike~



Lol, nederland-ish sounds a little bit like german, which is what I know almost fluently. I know english, and a little bit french.

-French(Je m'appelles Twiggy for victory, Et toi?)
-German(Ich heise Twiggy for victory(twiggy für den sieg))
-English(.....You dont know how to say it...?
My name is Twiggy for victory.)


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## Harlequin

I'm obviously fluent in English but the closest language after English is French. I'm fairly good at French but I wouldn't say I'm conversational yet. I've had conversations in French with real French people but I'm not confident enough to reply often or properly. I understand much more than I speak.

The next language after French would be Welsh, but I'm honestly really, really bad at it and only know random words and sentences. (Ga i fynd i'r toiledu?, mae hi'n bwrw'r glaw, mae'n gas gyda fi, wy wedi ffrio, gwallt etc)


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## Tailsy

I'm only fluent in a strange, unusual dialect that apparently needs to be subtitled everywhere else but here.

I can speak French too kinda, because I picked it up again for Higher. And I did Spanish two years ago but I've forgotten a lot of it. D:


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## Phyro Phantom

I fail at languages.  =(  I can only speak English properly, but I'm _supposed_ to know Spanish since my parents speak it, as well as a lot of people around where I live, but I only know a few words.  At least I can get all the pronunciation right.  (Except the rolled R's - I could never do those...  I guess my tongue muscles are weak?)  I studied Latin last year, but I failed and had to kinda cheat on the test to pass it.  T_T  Never done that before... I've always been the good little nerd.  Of course, cheating is hard to define when you're homeschooled.  Basically I'd better study harder this year or else I'm screwed.


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## Tarvos

Dutch reads like German quite a bit. It's close grammatically as well. Pronunciation is markedly different.


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## Yarnchu

こんにちは! ぼくは スーパーヨッシー888。すみません、ぼくの こくぶんぽうは よくない です。

Basically, I said my Japanese grammer is bad. I can't really understand it without a dictionary near by, but I can at least read it.


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## Dewgong

こんにちは! ぼくは スーパーヨッシー888。すみません、ぼくの こくぶんぽうは よくない です。

konnichiwa, boku wa su-pa-yosshi-888. sumimasen, boku no kokubunpou wa yokunai desu.

hello, i'm superyoshi888. sorry/pardon me, my japanese grammar isn't good.


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## Not Meowth

I know English fluently, four years' worth of German and five years' worth of French (mostly forgotten), and an assortment of words and phrases in random languages (los llamas son mas grande que las ranas).

I was going to try to learn some Russian for the school trip there in February but in all honesty I can't be bothered :P Same with various other languages, minus the school-trip-based inspiration.


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## Lord Shyguy

Well, I'm fluent in English (obviously), he estado aprendiendo español para aproximadamente un año, そして私はちょうど日本語を学び始めた。


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## surskitty

I'm sure there was already a thread for this somewhere.  [tags relevantly]

I'm mostly competent with English -- my grammar and spelling deteriorate at random, however -- annnnd I understand enough Spanish to communicate in Spanglish with some of my neighbors.  And I understand enough Japanese to play some video games well enough but don't ask me to speak/write in Japanese: my vocabulary suuuuucks and also I end up using http://www.guidetojapanese.org/ constantly.

おはよう〜！　私は　スクーツ　だ。　十七才　だろう　ね。　茶色アヒルは　ケンが　いる。一匹の猫と四匹の犬も　いる。　

私のホバークラフトは　うなげが　いっぱい　だ　ね。

日本語が話しにくい。　好き　じゃない。　（￣～￣;）


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## H-land

surskitty said:


> I'm sure there was already a thread for this somewhere.  [tags relevantly]


I'm sure that I remember it, too, but what the hay.

I'm really only fluent in English, since I've lived such a stereotypically normal childhood. (I'm a white American, I live with my mom, dad, and sister, we take vacations most every summer, and we live in a middle class suburban neighborhood in the Midwest populated almost exclusively by other white people. Though come to think of it, we can't be totally normal, since we don't have a dog and I didn't want one as a kid. But that's neither here nor there.) I have a large vocabulary in English, as well, a fact which I would attribute largely to my father's lectures as a child which included such words as "redundant", "reciprocation", "famine", and "utterance", which spurred me to try to figure out what the heck people were saying when they said things. (I'm sure that he would have preferred that they spurred me to brush my teeth more often, though, as that's what he usually lectured me about.) 
I've been taking Spanish in school at the honors level since eighth grade, and my dad had been trying to teach me what he remembered of his Spanish classes from college up until then. I still have a lot of trouble with speaking, hearing, and writing the language, though, and won't consider myself fluent until I can go to a bar somewhere in Mexico, and, not only order myself a drink, but eavesdrop on the other patrons at the bar and know what they mean.
I've been trying to learn Italian independantly for probably about a year. I mostly just know practical phrases like, "Spia piro!" and "Occhio il grosso!" and "Sentry avanti!" and culinary terms like "parmasean" and "fromaggio" and "biscotti", though, and I would have a hard time making ends meet were I today put in, say, Rome.
In preschool, my teachers tried to teach us all French. It didn't work. I'm signed up to take French in high school this year, though, and going in, I know a few select terms, such as "voulez-vous coucher avec moi", "deux boules [of ice cream], si vous plais", "brie et jambon, SVP", and "Parle-vous anglais?". I can read things in French when I'm lucky, pronounce them when I'm luckier, and spell them when I'm really on a roll and I'm having a good day.
My sister's been dabbling in German for some time, and with her trying to speak it so often, I've picked up a few words. My German is even more limited than my Italian or French, though, as about all I can say are "Die kline Eisbär est kaput, ja?", "Ich liebe die Luftwaffa," "Vol ist die S-bahn?" "Dummkopf!", "Mien Haus est neu", "Vasa, bitte," and "Danke". I usually make up German words by adding "en" to the end of English words.
I hope to some day master Spanish, possibly Italian and maybe French, learn a little Portugese, learn (at least to read) Arabic, and possibly even Russian phonetics or something.


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## Aobaru

English is my native language. Even better, I used to have a south-urn accent thanks to my family, be I taught myself out of that as soon as I was able.

I also am pretty good at Spanish. _Me parece muy facil._

I'm also interested in Japanese, Icelandic (though it seems very difficult), German, and French.


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## Shiny Grimer

Aobaru said:


> _Es muy facil, si me preguntas._


This is a weird-sounding construction. It would be better to say "me parece muy facil" or "lo encuentro muy facil". I don't mean to sound jerkish; just trying to help.


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## Aobaru

... said:


> This is a weird-sounding construction. It would be better to say "me parece muy facil" or "lo encuentro muy facil". I don't mean to sound jerkish; just trying to help.


I wrote that as if responding to a question. I understand how that could be confusing xD

_¿Que te parece español?_ 

You could answer formally (complete sentence), i.e.

_Me parece muy facil_. 

Or informally:

_Es facil._

But, hey, that's just the way I was taught.


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## Shiny Grimer

> _¿Que te parece español?_
> 
> You could answer formally (complete sentence), i.e.
> 
> _Me parece muy facil_.
> 
> Or informally:
> 
> _Es facil._
> 
> But, hey, that's just the way I was taught.


Those sentences are all correct; it's the earlier quote that was weird. "Es muy facil, si me preguntas" sounds like it's easy only when someone asks you about, and it seems translated directly from "It's pretty easy, if you ask me". That expression, as far as I know, doesn't exist in Spanish.


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## Rai-CH

I'm only fluent in English. I learnt Japanese and German at school for two years, though I gave up learning another language this year. I can only remember a few words in German and I can read Japanese Hiragana as long as I have a Hiragana chart in front of me.


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## Munchkin

I speak English. Not sure how to gauge my level of fluency, though I _think_ I'm pretty good, as I can speak, write, read, sing, etc. in English. It's my first language.

In my native language, Tagalog, I suppose I can get by, but I don't have that natural Filipino accent - I'm often laughed at by native Filipinos because I "sound like an American". I live in the US, though. What I meant was that when I visit the Philippines or speak with someone on the phone, they laugh.

In Spanish, I can hardly get by. I only know basic things/terms/phrases and the alphabet but since I never converse in Spanish, I've quickly forgotten how to. If you give me a basic sentence I can usually translate it fairly well, though my written Spanish is loads better than verbal. The terms I know best are mainly body parts, colors, numbers, and bits and pieces of such subjects as furniture, weather, and theme parks. I do listen to a lot of Reggaeton and sometimes memorize whole songs, though I usually have only the slightest clue as to what I'm saying xD
I can describe people fairly well, though.

I've never actually studied French (or rather, wasn't supposed to) but at my previous school, I would occasionally skip class when we had a substitute and sit in a French class instead. The teacher adored me because supposedly I "have a good ear", but I disagree. The meanings of most of the things I've learned haven't stuck in my head, but the words to the poem _Il pleure dans mon coeur_ are mostly there. I think I've forgotten the last line or two, though. If someone says something in French to me, slowly, I can usually do a fairly decent job of parroting it.

Japanese...I looked up an online guide one day when I was bored, but it's better for written Japanese. I want to learn to _speak_ Japanese, but with everything else I'm trying to learn, I don't think that seems very practical. I'll probably try Japanese after Spanish and French. I often watch animé in Japanese with English subs, though, to try and familiarize myself with the words and accents. I'm halfway through season 3 of Sailor Moon at the moment =3

Most of the foreign languages I try to speak usually come out in a somewhat Spanish-like accent, though I can't for the life of me figure out why. It would make more sense for them to come out in a Filipino accent, since I speak more Tagalog than Spanish, but hey. I'm just like that~


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## Dragon

Melodic Harmony said:


> In my native language, Tagalog, I suppose I can get by, but I don't have that natural Filipino accent - I'm often laughed at by native Filipinos because I "sound like an American".


Oh what same here

I'm Filipino too~ Didn't know you were, Harmony.

So obviously, I speak English, and am somewhat fluent in Tagalog, and know a pinch of French for school. Not enough to have a conversation or anything.

Kumusta, Harmony~


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## Skroy

Huh, I didn't know you, Dragon and Harmory, were Filipinos, too. (And I thought I was the only one on this site... =D). But unlike you two, I don't speak in Tagalog nor do I understand a word of it. Dx I don't know why the language didn't catch on to me; my family always spoke to me in Tagalog when I was a baby (my grandmother, on the other hand, would speak to me in Pangasinan instead). Then again, I only started to speak actual words at the age of four, so something must've been screwed up in my head at the time.


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## Dewgong

it's like a reunion now haha


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## Minkow

我是中国人。

and i speak english.


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## Ramsie

The only language I'm really fluent in is English because I live in landlocked Missouri. I just started my third year studying French so I can sort of understand it if it's spoken slowly. I read and write French better then I speak it. My pronunciation isn't great.

I'd like to becoming fluent in French and another language, though I'm not sure what other language I want to learn.


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## Munchkin

Dragon said:


> I'm Filipino too~ Didn't know you were, Harmony.
> 
> Kumusta, Harmony~


lol it's spelled "Kamusta" xD
Mabuti...po? You're older, right? =]
Ako rin - akala ko ako lang ang Pilipino dito.
Now, I wonder if I spelled all that correctly...as you can see, my written Tagalog is about as good as my ability to cook - which is pretty much non-existent.



Skroy Horitz said:


> Huh, I didn't know you, Dragon and Harmony, were Filipinos, too.


FAMILY REUNION OMGWTFBBQ
<3
I can haz English - Tagalog dictionary =3

Did any of you ever get an e-mail with something like "Nakakatawang Pinoy Signs" for the title? It's hilarious - I'll e-mail it to you guys, if you want~
You don't even have to understand Tagalog for most of them to be funny, just as long as you're familiar with a Filipino accent.


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## opaltiger

Watershed said:


> Dutch reads like German quite a bit. It's close grammatically as well. Pronunciation is markedly different.


_the g ahhhhhhh_

I speak fluent Slovenian and English. I nominally have five years' worth of German. It is more like two. I can get around a city?

eta: oh, by virtue of Slovenian I can mostly understand written Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, et al., and on a good day basic things in Russian, too.


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## Zora of Termina

I only speak English.
I might have the patience to learn a new language if someone could teach it in a way that interests me.
I failed Spanish 'cause it was boring, so. ><


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## glitchedgamer

Well, English obviously. Other than that, I know some Latin, but even after 4 years I can barely choke out a sentence. I'm good with vocab, but fall apart when it comes to the grammar...

I really want to start learning at least the basics of other languages...English is boring.


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## Dinru

I speak English fairly fluently. It is my native language.

Estoy estudianto español. Lo hablo mal, pero escribo y leo un poco bien. Creo. Tal vez.


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## M&F

Em primeiro lugar, my native language is Portuguese.

I speak English fluently as well, clearly. And estoy aprendiendo Spanish.


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## Vladimir Putin's LJ

What's with all these Portuguese people, we're inescapable.


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## M&F

Vladimir Putin's LJ said:


> What's with all these Portuguese people, we're inescapable.


Are there lots of Portuguese speakers here? :P

Well, Brazil is a pretty huge country.


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## Tarvos

opaltiger said:


> _the g ahhhhhhh_
> 
> I speak fluent Slovenian and English. I nominally have five years' worth of German. It is more like two. I can get around a city?


I still can't get my girlfriend to try and pronounce it...


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## opaltiger

Watershed said:


> I still can't get my girlfriend to try and pronounce it...


I have mostly given up and just pronounce it like a slightly rougher h.


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## FluffyGryphon

I speak american english, pardner. I can also speak various avian languages fluently.


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## Tarvos

opaltiger said:


> I have mostly given up and just pronounce it like a slightly rougher h.


try using the german (hard) ch sound for it, it's approximately like that


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## Vladimir Putin's LJ

Metallica Fanboy said:


> Are there lots of Portuguese speakers here? :P
> 
> Well, Brazil is a pretty huge country.


iirc there were at least three other Portuguese-speakers, but I think they were from Portugal? I am, anyway :v
Visited Brazil twice though, nice country.


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## GiratinaGiratina

I speak fluent British English (colour, favourite) but I also speak German/ aber Ich spreche Deutsch.


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## Amphacham

I'm fluent in English and Danish, and I am struggling to learn German.
Pluuuuus, I know a few random sentences in other languages:
Merra, merra! Tengu tu narris!
Ceci ne pas un pommes.
Je ne regrette rien.
Ajunngilaq.
They're probably all misspelled XD


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## Lorem Ipsum

Fluent in English, proficient in French and Spanish, learning Russian, and can speak tidbits of Greek, Cornish, Chinese, Japanese and Lithuanian (don't ask).

I also am proficient in Latin, though that's hardly useful today.


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## see ya

English...and that's about it. I want to learn another language, but I can never decide which one I want long enough to stick with it. I know a little bit of French thanks to a high school class I took for two years, but it really wasn't very competent, so I barely remember anything. I can read/write French much, much better than I can speak/understand it.

Spanish would definitely be the most practical to start with, seeing as I plan to move to the Southwest U.S. But I also want to finish French and pick up German as well. Oh, well, not like I don't have time, and there's always college courses...


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## Blastoise Fortooate

English, mostly.

Hablé Español, màs y menos...

I've been taking Spanish for a few weeks now, and can stumble through some basic phrases.


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## @lex

^That'd be "Hablo Español, más o menos."

Personally, I'm fluent in English and Swedish. Then there's the general knowledge of Germanic and Romance languages, which definitely helps. Although I wish I could actually use some of them...


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## Blastoise Fortooate

> ^That'd be "Hablo Español, más o menos."


We haven't gotten into gender-stuff yet, which is annoying.


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## Shiny Grimer

Blastoise said:


> We haven't gotten into gender-stuff yet, which is annoying.


Well, your sentence translated into "I spoke Spanish, more and less." If that was what you wanted to say, then it made sense, but it didn't seem that way. The new one is just in present tense. o.o


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## nothing to see here

The only thing I can speak/write/read fluently is English.  Mostly American English, but I've heard and seen enough British English to not be confused by it.

I know enough Spanish to pick up on the general idea of written things, but I can't really speak it or understand much of it when it's spoken... native speakers always talk so fast that I can only catch one or two words I recognize out of full sentences.

I can usually understand what's being said on Spanish TV stations if they have their closed-captions set up the right way, though.


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## Claudster

I can currently speak fluent english and french.
Now I just need to work on my portuguese which
I already understand very well but the speaking part... not so much.


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## Jolteon

I am fluent in Penish. I don't speak any other languages, especially not English.


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## Crazy Linoone

I can (usually) speak, write, and read English. I can read and speak Mandarin Chinese as well as understand a little bit of Japanese. 

I want to learn some non-oriental languages though... German sounds so cool.


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## Neo

English, fluently, and Welsh and German on a intermediate level.
Also know tiny bits of Finnish and Polish.


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## Shiny Grimer

To everyone out there studying a language:

What do you use to study your language? Do you take classes or study independently? What methods have you found that work best for you?

Here are some sites I've been using (or trying to use) to study Russian:
Livemocha: Do exercises which are graded by native speakers.
Qasana: Online Vocabulary program.
Lang-8: Write a journal entry, get corrected by native speakers, do same for people learning your language.
SCOLA: See broadcasts of news and interviews done in language of your choice. Requries password (but it's easily found).
Surusu: Make an account and have your own portable flashcard system.

There's some Russian specific stuff I could list if anyone's interested. :x

I try to make flashcards to carry in my pocket with vocabulary and I quiz myself whenever I'm not doing anything. It's pretty useful, imo.


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## Tarvos

use it every day


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## Shiny Grimer

Watershed said:


> use it every day


Wish I could do that too
but there are no Russian or French people where I live~


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## surskitty

then make an online friend who speaks russian or french and skype with them


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## Shiny Grimer

surskitty said:


> then make an online friend who speaks russian or french and skype with them


They all seem to stop after five posts.

I've had around three Russian e-mail pals, one of which stopped after three e-mails, the other which went on a little longer but stopped after five, and the last one which stopped after two. Skype sounds... somewhat fun but I'm not allowed to install it so poo.

Mostly I just try to read literature and listen to music because using it every day would be the best way, but I can't get in contact with real people (or seem to be interesting enough for them - wtf).


----------



## see ya

Observez, je retablis ceci trés vieux thread! Hahaha!

Oui, comme la magie, je rappelé soudainement ma capacité écrire et lire francais! Enfin...un peu. J'ai pas pratiquer beaucoup, donc ma grammaire est horrible, probabli. J'ai besoin de l'assistance, mais il est difficile trouver. Je veux appendre encore. :(


----------



## hopeandjoy

I speak basic Latin and so-basic-it's-basicly-non-existant Japanese.


----------



## Blastoise Fortooate

Tengo un boligrafo y una hoja de papel, pero no tengo un lapiz o un sacapunta. Conozco espanol un poco, pero mi profesor conoce mucho.

There's probably a billion mistakes in there, but whatever.


----------



## Togetic

I speak English, herr durr.

I also speak...*takes deep breath*
Fluent Mandarin
Fluent Cantonese
Semi-Fluent Shanghai-nese
A little Italian
A little Japanese
A little French
A little German
A little Indonesian (VERY little)
AND a little Latin.

Yes I'm dead serious.


----------



## Esque

I speak English well enough to know that I don't speak it fluently.
I'm in my first year of Latin classes but I'm learning second year material with the Certamen team.
Simply by living in this culture I've picked up a bit of Spanish, though I will eventually take up formal Spanish classes.
I know a small amount of Japanese from watching English subtitled Japanese television.
I'm taking informal lessons in Hebrew from my grandma, and am somewhat self-taught in hopes of following up my heritage a bit more.
And I will very soon be learning Greek. I already know the alphabet.


----------



## Teh Ebil Snorlax

Fluent in English, passable in Irish, basic Spanish.


----------



## SonicNintendo

English (main language, it'd be sad if I couldnt speak english)
Taking Italian in school (can keep a conversation)
The only thing I need to know in Spanish: No Hablo (Habla?) Espanol


----------



## Shiva64

English for me. I still... have grammar issues and whatnot with it, but I'm not really overly worried about it (it's generally readable, and I have gotten better with bits and pieces of it). I have poor comprehension skills in general so... trying to completely understand where to put what and when and all that is... confusing. Yeah. :|

Trying to learn Japanese though. I can *sing it*, but getting more of the pronounciation down is the part I'm trying to do before I go all out learning it. I have a speech deficiancy problem, so that makes it hard. I have the basics, but the more advanced sounds is the fun part.

I can generally understand German (like around 70% of the time, and not word for word, it's like... a broken english sort of thing or something idk). But I can't speak it or really translate it.

...Yeah.


----------



## Shiny Grimer

Hey Shiva, didn't you know a little bit of Vietnamese? I remember wanting to learn Vietnamese because of you. :p 



			
				SonicNintendo said:
			
		

> No Hablo (Habla?) Espanol


It's 'Hablo'. 'Habla' is third person. Also, why the hate against Spanish? :(

So, going over again: Spanish, English, French (getting better!)... once I finish my AP French exams, I'll do *fanfare* Russian, Hindi, I'm taking a Japanese class next year, I hope to get around with Navajo eventually, and I've been considering Indonesian. :p French is enough for me now.


----------



## Shiva64

... said:


> Hey Shiva, didn't you know a little bit of Vietnamese? I remember wanting to learn Vietnamese because of you. :p


Only a very tiny amount. I don't really remember any of what my dad knew and told me now (that's why I didn't put it up there)... but I may still learn a tiny bit because of Kristine Sa. Awesome Vietnamese singer, but also does English. She... even did an acapello on a webcast for me because I asked about "The Truth Is" since it's FFX-2 related, so now I wanna try to sing some of her Vietnamese songs.

So yeah. I may try again.


----------



## shiny jiggly

Obviously I can speak English but other than that, I'm learning Japanese and that's pretty much it. It's still tough for me to understand a fluent speaker going at normal speed (which is really fast) but I'll eventually get to that point someday.


----------



## Not Meowth

I've now begun very slowly and sporadically teaching myself Italian. I can't speak very much at this point, but I know how to say "the men are in bed", so it's not going too badly :J

I feel like learning Russian since I know the alphabet, or something random like Arabic, but I can't really be bothered.


----------



## Hiesetsu

I'm taking French is high school, you know how that is. And I have the Rosetta Stone for Japanese, but I can only say things like "Otokono mizuo non darimasu' or something. I can't spell it 'cause it shows it to me in katakana. If I spelled that right. I think it means 'boy drinks water'. Not positive, but that doesn't keep me from repeating it again and again.


----------



## Not Meowth

Hiesetsu said:


> I'm taking French is high school, you know how that is. And I have the Rosetta Stone for Japanese, but I can only say things like "Otokono mizuo non darimasu' or something. I can't spell it 'cause it shows it to me in katakana. If I spelled that right. I think it means 'boy drinks water'. Not positive, but that doesn't keep me from repeating it again and again.


Apparently I can say "Legend of Zelda" (Zeruda no densetsu) and "I am a man" (watashi wa otoko desu) in Japanese. I suppose in that case I can say "watashi wa densetsu" (maybe there's meant to be a desu in there too I've no idea what that bit is) which could be handy if I run into Japanese Will Smith fans.

I'd like to learn Japanese but I tried teaching myself a bit on the same site I use for Italian and I got lost really quickly, and I took one look at a chart of all the kana and my head exploded.


----------



## Rai-CH

I posted a while ago but I've got plans on learning new languages so I'm posting again.

I haven't continued in learning either Japanese or German, though I have remembered a few more phrases from when I learnt it over 2 years ago. However because I learnt those languages at the same time, I'll often mix them up and start speaking in a weird, mangled German-Japanese language XD

I can speak English, obviously. I still have terrible grammar, but I think I'm improving.

Seeing as I am planning on travelling around Europe after I complete Year 12, I want to learn the languages of the countries I plan on visiting (Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Iceland. I want to see England too but I can speak english.) I have a few phrasebooks that contains the majority of these languages so I can say extremely basic stuff such as hello and goodbye. Sadly, I couldn't find a phrasebook on Icelandic so I'm planning on just winging it and hoping I'll meet people who speak fluent English XD


----------



## Tarvos

Conveniently skipping the Benelux, I see? :)


----------



## Clover

Hiesetsu said:


> And I have the Rosetta Stone for Japanese, but I can only say things like "Otokono mizuo non darimasu' or something. I can't spell it 'cause it shows it to me in katakana. If I spelled that right. I think it means 'boy drinks water'.


男の水を... I don't even know where the last part's going, but 飲みます is how you would say '(a) man's water is drunk'. I think. 'Boy' would be 男の子, and the more logical way to say it would be 男の子は水を飲みます. (Otoko no ko wa mizu wo nomimasu, [the] boy drinks [the] water. And if you were a girl/woman saying that, you'd likely say 'omizu'.)

So yeah. Rosetta Stone is kind of... bad. It's showing you in katakana, not a mix of kana and kanji? o.O why?




Mike the Foxhog said:


> Apparently I can say "Legend of Zelda" (Zeruda no densetsu) and "I am a man" (watashi wa otoko desu) in Japanese. I suppose in that case I can say "watashi wa densetsu" (maybe there's meant to be a desu in there too I've no idea what that bit is) which could be handy if I run into Japanese Will Smith fans.
> 
> I'd like to learn Japanese but I tried teaching myself a bit on the same site I use for Italian and I got lost really quickly, and I took one look at a chart of all the kana and my head exploded.


"Watashi wa otoko desu" sounds kind of odd. It's like saying, "ah, ye-ah, and I'm, like, a man, man." ... in that kind of accent. If you're not saying it to your superiors, anyway, it'd sound better to say "Boku wa otoko da". Maybe "otoko no hito", idk.

I outlined some JP-learning resources in my conversation with L'il Dwagie here, maybe it could help! :D


----------



## Dannichu

Best bit about speaking really basic French? I live with three French students (that is, students studying French, not students from France) and I can break into my terrible French and they'll all start shouting at me.

My French grammar's terrible beyond words (as is my accent), but my vocab's pretty good. I can string together words and essentially speak French-caveman, which still gets across my point while making me look a little like a moron. Not helped my my constant discription of everything as "tres bein".


----------



## Lorem Ipsum

Mike the Foxhog said:


> I've now begun very slowly and sporadically teaching myself Italian. I can't speak very much at this point, but I know how to say "the men are in bed", so it's not going too badly :J
> 
> I feel like learning Russian since I know the alphabet, or something random like Arabic, but I can't really be bothered.


I've just started to learn Italian as well, because I'm going on a trip to Italy with school in October. So far, all I can say is 'il quaderno è sul tavolo' and 'sono inglese: sono nato in Inghilterra. Non viaggo molto.', but I hope that if I commit myself, I'll have it done in a few months.


----------



## speedblader03

I am fluent in english and gibberish. I am also trying to design my own language, with grammar based off of english.


----------



## 1. Luftballon

never desgin grammar based on english. it will fail horribly.

because english doesn't have a grammar.

it's just an abomination of rules and exceptions.


----------



## Patar

I'm learning Spanish in school. But I'm Chinese yet I fail at it completely. I didn't even bother going to Chinese school. I wanna learn Japanese like most fan boys but my mom said that Chinese and Japanese is like totally different. Chinese is pretty simple when it comes to writing. Like volocano. To write volocano, you just put fire and mountain together, making fire mountain. So that's pretty easy. But talking in Chinese is pretty hard. Lots of weird pronunciations and crap. So I don't bother.


----------



## Clover

Fluent in English, beginner-intermediate in Japanese after two+ years of self-study, one+ years of high-school Spanish, slowly trudging my way through Portuguese all the while cursing how similar and simultaneously dissimilar it is to Spanish.

And cursing gendered nouns. No one who speaks a crazy language that includes gendered nouns can say a thing about how hard Japanese is. Japanese is 朝飯前, Portuguese é muita areia para a minha camioneta.


----------



## Chaon

Fluent in English, I know a little French, I'm learning Latin, and I'm fluent in Pig Latin, Gibberish and Al Bhed.


----------



## Shiny Grimer

MidnightSaboteur said:


> And cursing gendered nouns. No one who speaks a crazy language that includes gendered nouns can say a thing about how hard Japanese is. Japanese is 朝飯前, Portuguese é muita areia para a minha camioneta.


Gendered nouns are stupid, but nothing compared to Japanese's backwards word order. Japanese may be "logical", but when the logic is totally different from what I'm used to it's not useful at all. Gender is a nuisance; word order is a nightmare. I'm not even getting into crap like declination.


----------



## 1. Luftballon

there is no such thing as backward word order. in any case, it's not like it matters that much. well, YMMV?


----------



## speedblader03

sreservoir said:


> never desgin grammar based on english. it will fail horribly.
> 
> because english doesn't have a grammar.
> 
> it's just an abomination of rules and exceptions.


I meant as in word order and such.  Any rules and exceptions that I don't like will be gone.


----------



## Clover

speedblader03 said:


> I meant as in word order and such.  Any rules and exceptions that I don't like will be gone.


... SVO word order is. um. probably the predominant word order in all languages.

Yeah I can foresee your conlang working swimmingly. And drowning. Have a link, 'cause you could likely do with some research.

(Not that I'm trying to dissuade you; a bunch of linguistically-oriented people toy with creating a conlang the way musically-orienteds write songs and spatially-oriented create sculptures, but. If you really want to do it, you should do it right, I think.)


----------



## Shiny Grimer

sreservoir said:


> there is no such thing as backward word order. in any case, it's not like it matters that much. well, YMMV?


I totally knew somebody was going to post this and yet I still neglected to say "compared to English". Oh well.

In any case here's an example about a machine that makes sounds to cover up the sound of your peeing:

トイレに入っている時の音を消すために水の 流れる音が出る機械です。 
Roughly: 
toilet-in entered-are when (poss.part.) sound (obj.part.) erase in-order-to water 
(poss.part.) pour sound (subj.part.) come out machine it is. 



> ... SVO word order is. um. probably the predominant word order in all languages.


???


----------



## 1. Luftballon

SVO = subj-verb-obj. I think.

"Is it not?"


----------



## Not Meowth

speedblader03 said:


> I am fluent in english and gibberish. I am also trying to design my own language, with grammar based off of english.


Inventing a language sounds like the kind of thing I'd do if I could be bothered to and had the faintest idea where to start. I have invented an alphabet for some reason, though, which is something :p


----------



## 1. Luftballon

and then when you get around to the actually language, you throw out half the glyphs because you don't nd them I did. :/


----------



## speedblader03

MidnightSaboteur said:


> ... SVO word order is. um. probably the predominant word order in all languages.
> 
> Yeah I can foresee your conlang working swimmingly. And drowning. Have a link, 'cause you could likely do with some research.
> 
> (Not that I'm trying to dissuade you; a bunch of linguistically-oriented people toy with creating a conlang the way musically-orienteds write songs and spatially-oriented create sculptures, but. If you really want to do it, you should do it right, I think.)


I don't understand why I would have to do any research. I'm simply replacing words with my own, removing parts to make it simpler, and eventually maybe making a set of characters. 
Basically I'm hoping to make it almost seamless to translate between it and english.


----------



## surskitty

That's pointless, then.  Also more of a cipher.


----------



## 1. Luftballon

code. or nomenclator.

that is not a language.


----------



## Shiny Grimer

sreservoir said:


> SVO = subj-verb-obj. I think.
> 
> "Is it not?"


You're right. I know what SVO is; I was calling into question the claim that SVO is the most common word order since the article I cited says that SOV is the most common.


----------



## Chaon

James said:


> That's pointless, then.  Also more of a cipher.


O.o Pig Latin, Gibberish and Al Bhed are all ciphers, but no one commented when I claimed they were languages. Although, I too am working on a cipher of sorts.


----------



## Minish

I know basic French from my GCSEs. In fact I can remember most of my oral examination thing, since I practically ingrained it in my head. Je prepare une presentation, et selon moi c'est tres interessant! And no, I'm not going to use the right accents because I actually don't give a toss. >:B

Aaand I know loads of random Japanese vocabulary, honorifics and a sort of basic understanding of how to say stuff in it. But I would never say I could actually _speak_ it in any way. I also know hiragana and can pronounce it pretty well, probably because I used to have a Scottish accent and thus can roll my 'r's well, fuahaha~

...yeah, I went through that 'I want to learn Japanese and live there and everything!' phase a few years ago. Thanks a lot, anime.


----------



## 1. Luftballon

wait, gibberish is a cipher? I thought it was a language that was spontaneously regenerated every time.


----------



## speedblader03

James said:


> That's pointless, then.  Also more of a cipher.


I don't understand. Elaborate.
(I didn't mean to make a discussion about this, I was just mentioning a project I'm working on when I get bored)


----------



## Shiny Grimer

speedblader03 said:


> I don't understand. Elaborate.
> (I didn't mean to make a discussion about this, I was just mentioning a project I'm working on when I get bored)


I don't know about you, but I find that learning languages is more interesting when they have features I can't find in my own native language. For example, the perfective/imperfective system and verbs of motion in Russian, the different word order and the honorifics system in Japanese, the retroflex sounds and ergativity (?) of Hindi...

If a language is like English but with a few words changed around, then it's boring.


----------



## Chaon

sreservoir said:


> wait, gibberish is a cipher? I thought it was a language that was spontaneously regenerated every time.


Niddigope. Thiddigis iddigis giddiberish.

TRANSLATED:

Nope. This is gibberish. 

To speak gibberish you divide the word approximately in half, then add iddiga dropping the I or the A if the two parts of the word end or start with a vowel.

EXAMPLE:

Dragon = Dr(iddig)agon

In the above word, the last A in "iddiga" was dropped because the broken word "agon" began with an a, and therefore, only one was needed.


You see? It's a cipher because it just adds, subtracts from, or rearranges already existing words.


----------



## speedblader03

... said:


> I don't know about you, but I find that learning languages is more interesting when they have features I can't find in my own native language. For example, the perfective/imperfective system and verbs of motion in Russian, the different word order and the honorifics system in Japanese, the retroflex sounds and ergativity (?) of Hindi...
> 
> If a language is like English but with a few words changed around, then it's boring.


But that's the part I don't like about learning a new language. Also, It isn't a few words changed around, it's every word has a separate translation. Things like making a word plural are also done differently, and there are no verb conjugations (I want to see if I can make that work).

And chaon, since when is that gibberish? I've always known it as random strings of sound, such as 'glefiggle strarble smek'. Gibberish isn't real words, its 'nonsense talk'. According to Wikipedia, you are talking about some new language game. Perhaps gibberish means something different in different areas.


----------



## 1. Luftballon

if you don't have anything in your conlang that doesn't _already exist in ni+1 natural language_, it's not worth having.

natural languages have at least the "it's our culture" aspect to it.

no verb conjugations is easy or impossible depending on how much qualifies as conjugation. if only modifying the root qualifies to you, goo look at, say, chinese. if anything that affects it at all counts, how are you expressing anything at all?


----------



## Not Meowth

sreservoir said:


> no verb conjugations is easy or impossible depending on how much qualifies as conjugation. if only modifying the root qualifies to you, goo look at, say, chinese. if anything that affects it at all counts, how are you expressing anything at all?


If you just count the whole "I am, you are, he/she/it is, we/they are" etc. thing then I can't see how it'd matter much. Tenses would have to stay, obviously.


----------



## 1. Luftballon

I'd rather settle on regular pronouns, too, but really, it doesn't matter if you just use the damn infinitive as long as you specify the subject.


----------



## Shiny Grimer

sreservoir said:


> if anything that affects it at all counts, how are you expressing anything at all?


This reminds me of something which was, at first, mind-boggling to me but then became really cool. 
In Hindi, 'kal' means both yesterday and tomorrow. You have to specify the tense to make it clear whether you're talking about yesterday or tomorrow. 'kal' is basically "one day from today".



> if you don't have anything in your conlang that doesn't already exist in ni+1 natural language, it's not worth having.


This.



> But that's the part I don't like about learning a new language.


:( This makes me a sad language nerd.


----------



## 1. Luftballon

... said:


> This reminds me of something which was, at first, mind-boggling to me but then became really cool.
> In Hindi, 'kal' means both yesterday and tomorrow. You have to specify the tense to make it clear whether you're talking about yesterday or tomorrow. 'kal' is basically "one day from today".


it also does not scale for time travel. "it will be yesterday for me tomorrow" starts making perfect sense. :(



> This.


tbf, 'linguistic consistency' is a good goal that really doesn't exist in ni+1 NL's, but anything building off english is going to be hard-pressed to reach that.



> :( This makes me a sad language nerd.


I can see why.


----------



## speedblader03

Please stop telling me what to do about this. It's just a small project that I made up to take up my free time. I will likely be the only one who will ever speak it, and it's only purpose would be so I could write or say things without people understanding me; basically allowing me to keep secrets without hiding anything, or to mess with people. Tenses do exist btw.
I just enjoy making up projects where I can do whatever I want.


----------



## 1. Luftballon

without any motivation to, it is very doubtful that even you will ever speak it.

do it anyway if you want to, though. it is fun.


----------



## Chaon

:D When you finish it, I will speak it with you so that you have someone to practice with! How does that sound?


----------



## Not Meowth

... said:


> This reminds me of something which was, at first, mind-boggling to me but then became really cool.
> In Hindi, 'kal' means both yesterday and tomorrow. You have to specify the tense to make it clear whether you're talking about yesterday or tomorrow. 'kal' is basically "one day from today".


Once I read about a language that not only has no system of numbers, _but has the same word for both "some" and "many"._


----------



## Shiny Grimer

@Mike: I think you are talking about Piraha. It has iirc no words for numbers at all.


----------



## speedblader03

Chaon said:


> :D When you finish it, I will speak it with you so that you have someone to practice with! How does that sound?


Lol that's IF I finish it. There's a lot of words to make up. Maybe I should start a text file...


----------



## Dewgong

hi i'm in love with different languages
studying italian atm.


----------



## ultraviolet

> Once I read about a language that not only has no system of numbers, _but  has the same word for both "some" and "many"._


I think some Aboriginal languages are like that.


----------



## Tarvos

I need to practise my French and German, dammit.


----------



## Lorem Ipsum

Dewgong said:


> hi i'm in love with different languages
> studying italian atm.


Yay! Another Italian learner! I've just finished learning the basic verb grammar (tenses, etc.) and am about to move onto things like the conditional and subjunctive moods.


----------



## Pook

My first language is Spanish, and I now speak mostly in English. I like to think I am fluent in both languages and can carry a conversation.


----------



## Dewgong

Lorem Ipsum said:


> Yay! Another Italian learner! I've just finished learning the basic verb grammar (tenses, etc.) and am about to move onto things like the conditional and subjunctive moods.


it's such a pretty language. i think you're a little further in it than i am, though.
you should send me a pm. we could be like study buddies.


----------



## Not Meowth

Dewgong said:


> it's such a pretty language.


Agreed. I think "arancione", "edificio", "asciugamano" and "cinque" may be my new favourite words.

Apparently I like the -tchi sound for some reason.


----------



## Dewgong

orange, building, towel, five.


----------



## Clover

Mike the Foxhog said:


> Once I read about a language that not only has no system of numbers, _but has the same word for both "some" and "many"._


_"In fact, trolls traditionally count like this: one, two, three... many, and people assume this means they can have no grasp of higher numbers. They don't realize that 'many' can be a number. As in: one, two, three, many, many-one, many-two, many-three, many many, many-many-one, many-many-two, many-many-three, many many many, many-many-many-one, many-many-many-two, many-many-many-three, *lots*."_


----------



## 1. Luftballon

so 4^0 is "one", 4^1 is "many", it stops being a base system and starts just appending random manies.

4^2 is lots?

lots-lot-lots-many-many-three, then, I suppose, would be seventy-five?


----------



## Spoon

I can speak English, obviously. However I only have a vague idea of certain grammar rules, like when to use 'lay or lie', 'while or whilst' and 'good or well.' I've been too lazy to bother with learning grammatically correct English. I also have a terrible time spelling words. 

 I'm in my second year of German at school, so I can pick up on a few words if I hear German, and write simple sentences that form into a paragraph, that sounds like a second grader wrote it, about the weather, apple juice, and noise pollution.


----------



## Dewgong

i think i only have a vague idea of grammar as well.


----------



## Not Meowth

MidnightSaboteur said:


> _"In fact, trolls traditionally count like this: one, two, three... many, and people assume this means they can have no grasp of higher numbers. They don't realize that 'many' can be a number. As in: one, two, three, many, many-one, many-two, many-three, many many, many-many-one, many-many-two, many-many-three, many many many, many-many-many-one, many-many-many-two, many-many-many-three, *lots*."_


I am so using this system from now on.


----------



## octobr

Learning french right now. It's not terribly difficult.


----------



## nothing to see here

I've randomly picked up tiny bits of Portuguese recently... since my dad's going to work in Brazil for a year or so starting sometime later this year, and he's been learning how to speak the language.

Can't really speak Portuguese at all, but now I know enough random words to not be completely confused if I see something written in it (and I don't mispronounce Portuguese words quite as horribly as I used to when I come across them... who would've guessed that R's are pronounced as H's and "ão" sounds more like "an"?)


----------



## Vladimir Putin's LJ

El Garbanzo said:


> who would've guessed that R's are pronounced as H's


uh ?_?


----------



## H-land

From studies in Italian, Spanish, and French, I have deduced that English has a really lousy word for "sewer". It just sounds ugly. At least compared to fagne and cloaca and égout. Sewer's no fun to say and it nearly grates on the ears.


----------



## speedblader03

I think that's the point.


----------



## @lex

H-land said:


> From studies in Italian, Spanish, and French, I have deduced that English has a really lousy word for "sewer". It just sounds ugly. At least compared to fagne and cloaca and égout. Sewer's no fun to say and it nearly grates on the ears.


I take it you wouldn't call a tailor a sewer? :3

Actually, "cloaca" is an English synonym for "sewer"... you could probably use it ^^

Problem is it will just make people think of platypuses.


----------



## thunder

I speak English as my main language and I also know German, Latin and I am just starting learning ancient greek.


----------



## Vipera Magnifica

I speak English, and am pretty good with Spanish.


----------



## Ryan the Terrible

*epic bump because I'm way too intrigued by languages*

My native language is English, and I'm better at it than most people I know. It confuses me how people can't speak proper English in America, where they've been speaking it all their lives. :\ English is boring though, I don't know of a more watered down language.

Ich lerne deutsch seit zwei Monaten. Ich verstehe und schreibe es gut, aber ich kann es gut nicht sprechen. Die Aussprache ist ganz schwer. (Probably a couple grammar mistakes and mistranslations, but there's my effort.)

I wish I knew more languages than just the 1.01 that I know now, I am way too fascinated by foreign languages. By the time I turn 25 my goal is to know at least English, German, Spanish, French, and Italian. I will not achieve this goal, but I'll end up convincing myself I can do it anyway. I also want to learn Russian, if just for the funky-looking alphabet. 8)


----------



## Superbird

I'm half-fluent in French. I haven't taken french in 3 years, but I took it for 6 years in Elementary school. Bonjour!


----------



## Shiny Grimer

Hematophyte said:


> English is boring though, I don't know of a more watered down language.


What do you mean by "watered down"? English is a rich and expressive language.


----------



## Zuu

This is weird, I was thinking of making a thread like this. Even if this thread is old. Eh.

Hello! My name is Zuu, and I speak English.

Salvete! Clueo Zuem, et loquor Linguam Latinam. (Yes, Zuu is now 3M/F: Zuu, Zuis, Zui, Zuem, Zue; Zues, Zuum, Zuibus, Zues, Zuibus. Deal with it.)

Bonjour! Je m'appelle Zuu, et ... um ... au revoir. (I can't speak French. Learning!)


----------



## Jolty

Hematophyte said:


> Ich lerne deutsch seit zwei Monaten. Ich verstehe und schreibe es gut, aber ich kann es gut nicht sprechen. Die Aussprache ist ganz schwer. (Probably a couple grammar mistakes and mistranslations, but there's my effort.)


I've been learning German for 2 months, I something and write it good but I can't speak it well something something

I'm like ecstatic that I could understand some of that!!!!!! I've been learning it for about one month now

ok erm
Ich spreche fließend Englisch, ein bisschen Deutsch und ein bisschen nicht gut Schwedisch!


----------



## spaekle

Anyone have any advice for someone who wants to self-teach German? I have some books and stuff and I've been studying when I have time, but I'm not sure how to really start making progress. :c


----------



## Zuu

Spaekle said:


> Anyone have any advice for someone who wants to self-teach German? I have some books and stuff and I've been studying when I have time, but I'm not sure how to really start making progress. :c


Try to find a German speaker (preferably native or semi-native) and try to hold conversations with it I guess. There's a text board for languages on 4chan, /lang/, and you could probably make a thread about it or something. Good luck, anyway.


----------



## Clover

You're probably the first person to recommend 4chan for learning languages, Zuuster.

De qualquer jeito, eu estive no Brasil há mais ou menos três meses. Meu português ainda não é o melhor... mas estou tentando! Aprendendo coisas novas todos os dias! o/

もちろん、私の日本語はひどいとなっている。 (ry

Eu quero aprender japonês, português, espanhol e esperanto pelo tempo que eu com vinte. Sim.


----------



## Vladimir Putin's LJ

Shamefully I am still in the same place linguistically :(
Fluent in Portuguese, English, French and Dutch.
Learning Russian.
When fluent in Russian, plan to learn German because it should be fairly easy. Either that or a Scandinavian language.

Then I'm done.


----------



## Tarvos

Learn German, it's more useful.


----------



## Music Dragon

Hematophyte said:


> My native language is English, and I'm better at it than most people I know. It confuses me how people can't speak proper English in America, where they've been speaking it all their lives.


I think there are plenty of people in America who speak proper English. About as many as there are in other countries, at least! As far as I know, most people don't speak their own languages perfectly - they certainly don't _write_ them perfectly, anyway. There are plenty of people in Sweden who don't, even more people in France who don't, and certainly people in the UK who don't... I've never been to the US, but I'm sure the situation is much the same there.



Hematophyte said:


> English is boring though, I don't know of a more watered down language.





... said:


> What do you mean by "watered down"? English is a rich and expressive language.


Also, if you only speak one language, what are you comparing it to? Or maybe you're just not better at it than most people you know.



Jolty said:


> ein bisschen nicht gut Schwedisch!


Das ist wunderbar! ... or something.


----------



## Tarvos

English has some absolutely wonderful expressions, but it's horrible when spoken by someone who does not understand the lovely use of nuance, understatement and irony that especially the English have invented.


----------



## Minkow

Native languages are English and Chinese.
我去上学的时候我说英文，但是我回家的时候， 我说中文。
Je suis un étudiant français, mais je ne parle pas bien.
I hope to learn Italian.
EDIT: faaaaaail i already posted here. gah.
Also should I take Chinese as a course or learn Italian? Because while I speak Mandarin very fluently, I'm practically illiterate, yet Italian seems pretty hard. '~'


----------



## Tarvos

Learn Chinese, italian is way less hard


----------



## Ryan the Terrible

... said:


> What do you mean by "watered down"? English is a rich and expressive language.





Music Dragon said:


> Also, if you only speak one language, what are you comparing it to? Or maybe you're just not better at it than most people you know.


Well I'm probably just way too picky, almost certainly too picky, especially since I only have some limited German and basic knowledge of Spanish and French to compare to. But it seems like everything new I learn in German is "here are the multiple German words that are different uses of one English word". English for the most part has no different noun genders, and only two forms of verbs in the present tense; that much is crazily condensed compared to other languages.

But two things I now realize I definitely shouldn't try to do: judge my native language until I have another fluent one I can compare it to, and try to talk about anything intelligently past midnight. :|



Music Dragon said:


> I think there are plenty of people in America who speak proper English. About as many as there are in other countries, at least! As far as I know, most people don't speak their own languages perfectly - they certainly don't _write_ them perfectly, anyway. There are plenty of people in Sweden who don't, even more people in France who don't, and certainly people in the UK who don't... I've never been to the US, but I'm sure the situation is much the same there.


This is probably also partly due to my insane pickiness, and my habit of correcting everyone's grammar mistakes as soon as they hit the air, but I also live in a Midwest US suburb where people "ain't got no" something more often than they "don't have any" of it.



Jolty said:


> I've been learning German for 2 months, I something and write it good but I can't speak it well something something
> 
> I'm like ecstatic that I could understand some of that!!!!!! I've been learning it for about one month now
> 
> ok erm
> Ich spreche fließend Englisch, ein bisschen Deutsch und ein bisschen nicht gut Schwedisch!


xD

What I said basically translates to, "I've been learning German since two months ago. I understand and write it well, but I can't speak it well. The pronunciation is quite hard."

And you speak fluent English, a little German, and a little poor Swedish.

DEUTSCH MACHT SPAß! :D

There is something overwhelmingly satisfying about looking at text in a foreign language and not seeing it as total gibberish. :3


----------



## Zuu

Hematophyte said:


> English for the most part has no different noun genders


... You act like this is a bad thing.


----------



## Blastoise Fortooate

Hematophyte said:


> ...I also live in a Midwest US suburb where people "ain't got no" something more often than they "don't have any" of it.


Same, around here. Also, people tend to say 'the most blankest' a _lot_. 

Still know a bit of spanish, for the record.


----------



## Tailsy

Zuu said:


> ... You act like this is a bad thing.


This. Considering English's sporadic grammar rules and words like _set_ which have over 100 different meanings and its obsession with stealing words from other languages and half of its words being easily modifiable into meaning just about anything you want them to as long as you use them in the right way, I'd say English is a powerful, if very difficult, language.

French is for succinct people. English is for artists! *sparkle*


----------



## Dannichu

Mon francias c'est tres nul, mais it's tres amusant to parle it in front of my amis pas que they all study francais et then they throw livres dans my tete.

Bon temps.


----------



## Superbird

Dannichu said:


> Mon francias c'est tres nul, mais it's tres amusant to parle it in front of my amis pas que they all study francais et then they throw livres dans my tete.
> 
> Bon temps.


Translation:
"My french is very meager, but it's very amusing to speak it in front of my friends because they all study french and then they throw books in [I think you meant _a_, which means at] my head.


----------



## Shiny Grimer

> English for the most part has no different noun genders,


Yeah, this is a good thing. Noun genders are arbitrary and useless. Why would you want them? I speak Spanish and they don't enhance the language. Spanish has some advantages over English but noun gender is definitely not one of them.

I'll never understand the fascination English speakers have with noun genders. o.o I've actually heard this sentiment a lot before.



> and only two forms of verbs in the present tense; that much is crazily condensed compared to other languages.


English may not have conjugations, but it has a lot of tenses. English has way more tenses than Russian, for example, and I think about as many as Spanish. The simple conjugations just make life easier. Besides, English makes up for it with articles (ask a Russian speaker learning English about all the FUN they have with articles), prepositions, and all the wonderful irregular conjugations we have. English may not be morphologically complex, but that doesn't make it "watered down".



> This is probably also partly due to my insane pickiness, and my habit of correcting everyone's grammar mistakes as soon as they hit the air, but I also live in a Midwest US suburb where people "ain't got no" something more often than they "don't have any" of it.


"Ain't got no" is perfectly acceptable in some dialects. I don't see the problem with using it at home or around friends; most people have to code-switch between two dialects anyway. :P



> There is something overwhelmingly satisfying about looking at text in a foreign language and not seeing it as total gibberish. :3


Isn't it wonderful? And the feeling you get when you can just pick up a newspaper and read almost anything in it is extraordinary.


----------



## Music Dragon

Grammatical genders serve absolutely no purpose whatsoever and should be obliterated.

SI J'AVAIS L'PORTEFEUILLE DE MANU CHAO, J'PARTIRAIS EN VACANCES AVEC TOUS MES POTOS!


----------



## Lorem Ipsum

Zuu said:


> Salvete! Clueo Zuem, et loquor Linguam Latinam. (Yes, Zuu is now 3M/F: Zuu, Zuis, Zui, Zuem, Zue; Zues, Zuum, Zuibus, Zues, Zuibus. Deal with it.)


ave, amicus meus, mihi delectat linguam latinam loquor potes et erratos non facis!


----------



## Zeph

Superbird said:


> [I think you meant _a_, which means at] my head.


I think _you_ mean _à_! A means 'has'.

Alors oui, je crois que je parle semi-couramment le francais ; je veut dire, je l'étudie pendant, euh, six ans, et j'y continuerai pendant au moins une autre année. Et, euh, je veut l'étudie à l'université peut-etre (Si les frais universitaires sont réduits à l'avenir... Maudit conservateurs...!).


----------



## Lorem Ipsum

je veu_x_ dire, _depuis_ six ans

Aussi, si vous pensez qu'il est la faute de les conservateurs que les universités vont avoir des frais augmentés, vous avez tort — le Lord Browne n'a pas une préférence dans la Chambre des Lords, et le ministre pour les Universités, M. Cable, est une libéral-democrate. Et personne ne veut augmenter les frais universitaires, mais après la situation catastrophique que le parti travailliste a laissé, il est necessaire. Bien que je ne sois pas d'accord en termes de les frais universités, je pense qu'ils sont necessaire, malheureusement.


----------



## Zeph

...Je l'ai su. J'aurais DU le savoir. Zut. Ne t'inquiete pas, sois assuré que normalement j'aurais l'écrire correctement. Heuh.

Mmmouais peut-etre. Mais vraiment, je plaisantais... Mais c'est, bien, _injuste_...! En fait, si les frais ne sont pas réduits, quel sera le résultat? Les riches deviennent plus riche, et les pauvres deviennent plus pauvre (Parce que les riches qui peuvent aller a l'université, _ils_ obteniront des metiers bien-payé prestigieux, et les pauvres... ils doivent travailler comme, je ne sais pas, comme éboueurs etcetera).


----------



## Music Dragon

Ne parlons plus de la politique! J'trouve que la langue française est trop belle pour ça.

Sinon... je vais me mettre en grève.


----------



## Zeph

M-m-mais JE DEFENDAIS MES DROITS!

Mais ouais, j'en suis d'accord, le francais est belle. En fait, le samedi, mon correspondant de l'échange francais arrivera...! J'ai vraiment hâte d'avoir une semaine en laquel je peux parler le francais avec _quelqu'un_, plutot qu'a moi-meme.

...Je deteste le fait que mon clavier anglais ne me laisse qu'insérer les accents aigue seulement.


----------



## Lorem Ipsum

Ah, je suis d'accord - le français est très beau. Mais il est moins beau que l'italien, la langue d'amour, ou que le latin, la mère de tout ces langues belles.


----------



## Zuu

Lorem Ipsum said:


> ave, amicus meus, mihi delectat linguam latinam loquor potes et erratos non facis!


O, mi puer, me places. Sed vero, non bene loquor Linguam Latinam; modo mensuram parvam loquor.


----------



## opaltiger

Look, guys, I can do this too!

Vceraj sem naletel na prav ogromnega cmrlja, ki je letal okoli ministrstva za okolje.


----------



## Zuu

opaltiger said:


> Look, guys, I can do this too!
> 
> Vceraj sem naletel na prav ogromnega cmrlja, ki je letal okoli ministrstva za okolje.


"cmrlja" doesn't even look like a word.


----------



## Murkrow

... said:


> Yeah, this is a good thing. Noun genders are arbitrary and useless. Why would you want them? I speak Spanish and they don't enhance the language. Spanish has some advantages over English but noun gender is definitely not one of them.
> 
> I'll never understand the fascination English speakers have with noun genders. o.o I've actually heard this sentiment a lot before.


This might sound like a stupid question, but it's slightly related. I've often wondered why there are gender pronouns. I don't really see the point, since it only helps with ambiguity if you're talking about two people who identify differently. Most languages seem to have them and I've always wondered why, has it ever been entirely necessary to use them? Why are there only two (I know there are languages that have more than two but in my experience most have two when referring to people) when we could have more, and we could even use other arbitrary differences between people to base pronouns off of.

It might be a bit more confusing but calling everyone 'it' would have been much easier. It works for when we're talking about animals!


----------



## shadow_lugia

Like many Americans, I natively speak English, and apparently pretty well too. I'm in English 10, and it's pretty easy, considering I'm the only freshman in that period.

I'm also trying to learn Spanish. I would've said that in the little Spanish that I know, but I haven't the faintest idea what the word for 'learn' is. I just learned that one of my student teachers studied abroad in Spain, and I'd love to do the same.

Otherwise, my school also offers German courses, which I would enjoy if I get room in my schedule, and I might try to get my grandparents to teach me Arabic and Korean if they have time after moving back to the U.S.


----------



## Shiny Grimer

Rasrap Smurf said:


> This might sound like a stupid question, but it's slightly related. I've often wondered why there are gender pronouns. I don't really see the point, since it only helps with ambiguity if you're talking about two people who identify differently. Most languages seem to have them and I've always wondered why, has it ever been entirely necessary to use them?


Languages have many features that aren't entirely necessary. English has a whole bunch of tenses that simply don't exist in other languages. Russian distinguishes between ways of moving in a way that can't be expressed succinctly in English which is made worse by the addition of prefixes. The Romance languages have an entire tense which means absolutely nothing and is used in certain grammatical situations just because (subjunctive tense, whoo!).

Why do they develop? I don't know. I've often asked myself that. Perhaps I'll ask the folks at some language boards I go to and see if they know.



> Why are there only two (I know there are languages that have more than two but in my experience most have two when referring to people) when we could have more, and we could even use other arbitrary differences between people to base pronouns off of.


Only two because... well in ancient cultures there were considered to be two sexes? The languages with more than two usually have noun class as opposed to noun gender and it IS based off arbitrary differences (one classification in one Australian language iirc groups together "women, fire, dangerous things". and yes this is fodder for lots of jokes).



> It might be a bit more confusing but calling everyone 'it' would have been much easier. It works for when we're talking about animals!


There are many languages that have this - off the top of my head Finnish, Navajo, and Yoruba (and i think they all use some variation of "ei" for it - weird coincidence).

I think "he" and "she" reduce ambiguity, though. There's already ambiguity when you're talking about same-sex groups ("and then he, John, told him, Ahmed, that he, Max, liked him, Jacob.") - he and she clear up SOME of it when you're talking about mixed groups. I suppose it would be worse if there were just some catch-all third person pronoun. I think there's some conlang which lets you assign "markers" to people so you have like "Jacob-ka" and "Ahmed-mi" and then you can be like "He-ka likes him-mi." It may have been interlingua but I really don't care about conlangs so I wouldn't know. :P


----------



## Zuu

... said:


> The Romance languages have an entire tense which means absolutely nothing and is used in certain grammatical situations just because (subjunctive tense, whoo!).


Not to be inordinate, but I hardly believe that the subjunctive mood is meaningless, not to mention it's not just found in Romance languages.


----------



## Shiny Grimer

Zuu said:


> Not to be inordinate, but I hardly believe that the subjunctive mood is meaningless, not to mention it's not just found in Romance languages.


I know it's found beyond the Romance languages, but I am most familiar with its use in the Romance languages and didn't want to make any assumptions about it in other languages.

As for meaningless, I think perhaps I ought to explain. The subjunctive is used only after certain grammatical constructs. It does not contrast with another tense, it simply used after certain constructs because of a variety of historical reasons. The only reason one says "The doctor recommended that he take the medicine"* is because of tradition. There is no difference in meaning - at least to me - between "The doctor recommended that he take the medicine" and "the doctor recommended that he should take the medicine." If in Spanish the subjunctive were to die out, we would not be losing any important distinction. The subjunctive is used only because it "sounds right." It's not like the difference between the simple past "I ate" and the past perfect (?) "I have eaten" where there is a distinction.

Basically, if the subjunctive were to die out, the language wouldn't be losing anything. That is what I mean by it. Of course, there are people who argue that there IS something inherently different about the subjunctive. Really, I'm open-minded on the issue so if you have a different view, I'd be interested in hearing it.

*if you're American, that is. I recall reading that British people are more likely to avoid the subjunctive and say instead "The doctor recommended that eh should take the medicine" or something like that.

EDIT: Found the post.


			
				s_allard said:
			
		

> Calling the subjunctive a completely separate reality is a bit of an exaggeration. I think linguists are divided over the role of the subjunctive. (I'll admit that I'm more familiar with the linguistics of French than of Spanish). Some people believe that the subjunctive is just a grammatical constraint. Certain constructions take the subjunctive. For example, querer que takes the subjunctive because it is the rule. Metaphysical considerations are quite irrelevant. The vast majority of the subjunctives in Spanish and French are structurally bound.
> 
> Another school of thought, associated with Gustave Guillaume in French, believes that there is some special relationship with reality in the use of the subjunctive. I don't have the time to go into the details. The key idea here is that the subjunctive mood requires a certain perception of the state of events. It goes beyond the structural constraints. This applies particularly in those situations where one can indicate a nuance between the indicative and the subjunctive, e.g. tal vez or aunque.
> 
> I am of the first school. I don't think the subjunctive adds anything that the indicative cannot do in the same context. How does "Buscan empleados que hablen ruso" differ in meaning from "*Buscan empleados que hablan ruso"? In other words, I believe that the subjunctive is basically meaningless and is essentially a grammatical rule.*


*I think this is a bad example because the second example IS correct.


----------



## Zuu

I don't know; I think it does contribute to meaning and understanding. But I guess I can see what you're saying. Of course, my only real experience with subjunctive tense is in Latin, where the change in how you conjugate the words is fairly drastic, but to me it just makes sense. Anywho.


----------



## Lorem Ipsum

The subjunctive in Latin makes sense because there is no conditional mood (that I know of), and it's expressed through the subjunctive, further demonstrating the idea of something that isn't definite. Obviously, in modern Romance languages, the conditional is there, and therefore the subjunctive isn't as useful.

And on the topic of noun genders, they're just called masculine, feminine and neuter because that's a name given to them. They could be called blue, green and red - it makes no difference. 'puella' could be called feminine; I could call it "dog" if I wanted to - it's just words attached to these things to help understanding.


----------



## Tarvos

opaltiger said:


> Look, guys, I can do this too!
> 
> Vceraj sem naletel na prav ogromnega cmrlja, ki je letal okoli ministrstva za okolje.


Ik kan het nog wel sterker maken dan dat, haha...


----------



## Vladimir Putin's LJ

Zuu said:


> "cmrlja" doesn't even look like a word.


how do you even pronounce it
ssmrulya?


----------



## opaltiger

Vladimir Putin's LJ said:


> how do you even pronounce it
> ssmrulya?


very, very roughly: chmur-lya


----------



## nastypass

opaltiger said:


> very, very roughly: chmur-lya


Oh hey, my guess wasn't completely wrong!

I am boring; native English, learning Spanish 'cause High School.  If I had _any_ choice aside from Spanish I'd probably take it, to be honest.  Unless it were a Slavic (I'm assuming Russian doesn't count as a Slavic language, what with it using a separate alphabet-- I'd actually jump at the chance to learn Russian) or Celtic language, I've very little interest in them.  Although Breton would be kind of fun to know, if only just to confuse people, but learning it would be hell.


----------



## opaltiger

Russian is very definitely a Slavic language. Why would the alphabet matter? Serbian and Bulgarian both use Cyrillic, too.


----------



## nastypass

opaltiger said:


> Russian is very definitely a Slavic language. Why would the alphabet matter? Serbian and Bulgarian both use Cyrillic, too.


... oh, so they do.  Derp.  Well, I'm uninterested in non-Russian Slavic languages, then.  :P


----------



## Shiny Grimer

Lorem Ipsum said:


> And on the topic of noun genders, they're just called masculine, feminine and neuter because that's a name given to them. They could be called blue, green and red - it makes no difference. 'puella' could be called feminine; I could call it "dog" if I wanted to - it's just words attached to these things to help understanding.


Not entirely. They're called masculine and feminine because they use articles that are used to refer to males and female. "El aleman" refers to a male German and "la alemana" refers to a female German. The naming is not arbitrary at all - at least in the Romance languages.


----------



## Elliekat

Haven't I posted here yet?! *swoops in*

... I uh speak only English fluently. I am boring :\

OH and un poco Espanol from school :) I would like to learn more languages though.


----------



## Whirlpool

I speak English fluently, Chinese semi-fluently (mostly grammar that I have problems with), and learning first-year French at school. 

On the topic of French, what's the point of the pronoun "on"? I've heard it's similar to a singular "we", but I'm still confused.


----------



## Superbird

French pronouns aren't that complicated. On the Left we have singular. On the right we have plural.:

Je: Me.........................Nous: Us
Tu: You (singular)..........Vous: You (Plural)
Il: Him.........................Ils: Them (male or both genders)
Elle: Her......................Elles: The (Female)

So basically, Je is first person me, or Nous as first person we, referring to a group the speaker is in. Tu and Vous as the second-person "you", for singular and plural respectively. Il and Elle are the third person "Him" and "Her", or "Them", as if talking about the group in question but not directly adressing them.

...Was that too complicated?


----------



## Phantom

My first language is English, my learned languages are Spanish, French, and German. More Spanish than the other two though.


----------



## Shiny Grimer

Leafstorm said:


> On the topic of French, what's the point of the pronoun "on"? I've heard it's similar to a singular "we", but I'm still confused.


"On" when used in books means "one" as in "one should clean one's room". "On" when used colloquially means "we". I was reading this one French book and it's amazing how often they use "on" instead of "nous". So basically, in informal language "on" substitutes "nous". When speaking with any level of formality, "on" just means "one" and you should use "nous".


----------



## Crazy Linoone

看的懂的人請舉手!

我也會別人看不懂的語言...


----------



## Dannichu

opaltiger said:


> Vceraj sem naletel na prav ogromnega cmrlja, ki je letal okoli ministrstva za okolje.





			
				Watershed said:
			
		

> Ik kan het nog wel sterker maken dan dat, haha...


I see your wacky, unpronouncable languages and raise you _Welsh_.


----------



## Zuu

Shariso! Ferun anilto Zuuvo alse, al Elethivo rhonthi.


----------



## opaltiger

Dannichu said:


> I see your wacky, unpronouncable languages and raise you _Welsh_.


I don't know, Welsh really isn't that bad once you work out w is a vowel.


----------



## Whirlpool

... said:


> "On" when used in books means "one" as in "one should clean one's room". "On" when used colloquially means "we". I was reading this one French book and it's amazing how often they use "on" instead of "nous". So basically, in informal language "on" substitutes "nous". When speaking with any level of formality, "on" just means "one" and you should use "nous".


And it conjugates the same as "il" and "elle", right? That makes more sense now.

Why does it seem that English has such a more simple system of conjugating verbs than other languages? In French, the verb pretty much changes with each pronoun, at least in the present tense, but in English, most verbs stay similar to the "infinitive" (to (verb)).


----------



## Zuu

the languages have different morphologies. French seems to be pretty fusional (or at least Latin definitely is) which means endings change and include a lot of information (gender, number, whatever) while English is less fusional and more analytical which means there are words like "to" and "of" instead of including them in endings.

put simply, I guess.


----------



## Music Dragon

In other news, English prepositions have always been the hardest part at the language with me for learn.


----------



## Vladimir Putin's LJ

speak four languages fluently, have not a single clue of the names of any tense or how to conjugate anything yet still make no mistakes while speaking and writing
feels good man

I have a feeling my usual strategy won't work with Russian though.


----------



## Tarvos

Dannichu said:


> I see your wacky, unpronouncable languages and raise you _Welsh_.


You don't know our vowel sounds yet.


----------



## opaltiger

Who cares about your vowel sounds, the Gs are the real killers.


----------



## Tarvos

Them and the ch's. Same sound. Very confusing.


----------



## shy ♡

Gender pronouns are the worst part of Hebrew. :[ Bleurgh. Not because it's difficult but because of, you know, it's needlessness and that I hate being referred to as a specific gender and bleeeeh.

I hate Hebrew. Sigh.


----------



## Kratos Aurion

English. That's it. I have taken almost twelve years of basic Spanish/Spanish I thanks to constantly changing schools and teachers, all of who felt the need to _start over every single time_ because they weren't the ones who taught us the last five iterations of Spanish I etc.. I was one of the best in my class but only because I actually made an effort to pay attention, and I still learned nothing and forgot most of it when I graduated high school. (I probably remember a bit more than I give myself credit for, but I never have any reason to practice or keep up with it. :( )

There was also German in 7th and 8th grade, but the rest of the class never paid attention there, either, and the teacher spent more time yelling at them and knocking over desks and breaking doors than teaching us anything. I remember absolutely nothing about German aside from how to count to twelve, maybe a little higher than that on a good day. This is a slight problem because I'm kind of hoping to spend a quarter abroad in Berlin if we can afford it. I imagine it won't be a _huge_ problem if I'm less fluent than a native two-year-old because it's an art program and all, but still, I'd feel bad. :(

I would actually rather learn some other language, or at least something else in addition to those, but I've been too lazy to attempt self-teaching or even self-reteaching. More :(


----------



## Shiny Grimer

You don't know what unpronounceable is until you've seen the Caucasian languages.

Geogrian: ვწითლდები (vts'itldebi)
meaning "I blush." I think I'd blush trying to say that in front of a native Georgian.

And don't get me started on Salish.
Here's a Nuxálk word: xłp̓x̣ʷłtłpłłskʷc̓, meaning "he had had a brunchberry plant"
_no freaking vowels_


----------



## Tarvos

Pentimento said:


> Gender pronouns are the worst part of Hebrew. :[ Bleurgh. Not because it's difficult but because of, you know, it's needlessness and that I hate being referred to as a specific gender and bleeeeh.
> 
> I hate Hebrew. Sigh.


Shalom and good luck with that.

I know about 10 words in Hebrew. That's that.


----------



## Zuu

... said:


> Geogrian: ვწითლდები (vts'itldebi)
> meaning "I blush." I think I'd blush trying to say that in front of a native Georgian.


Georgian is fucking gorgeous. hnnngh. look at that alphabet. it's some Lord of the Rings shit.


----------



## shy ♡

Watershed said:


> Shalom and good luck with that.
> 
> I know about 10 words in Hebrew. That's that.


Eh, I'm fluent in Hebrew, but I wish I could swap it for a more useful language. I mean, no one really speaks Hebrew outside of Israel. So boring.


----------



## Dannichu

Right then. Effective immediately, gendered pronouns have been replaced with hair-coloured pronouns. One for people with light hair, one for people with dark hair and one for gingers. You must fit yourself into one of these arbitrary categories (but, by god, you'd better pick the _right_ one if you don't want to be laughed out of the room). If you're grey, you pick the one you like most. If you're bald, you're not a real person and don't deserve a pronoun.


----------



## RespectTheBlade

Yo hablo espanol, sort of. I'm horrible at speaking and composing sentences, but I can translate, listen and read pretty well. 

And I'm familiar with a bit of latin.


----------



## Eloi

Dannichu said:


> Right then. Effective immediately, gendered pronouns have been replaced with hair-coloured pronouns. One for people with light hair, one for people with dark hair and one for gingers. You must fit yourself into one of these arbitrary categories (but, by god, you'd better pick the _right_ one if you don't want to be laughed out of the room). If you're grey, you pick the one you like most. If you're bald, you're not a real person and don't deserve a pronoun.


The light-haired pronoun "aub" is from Early Modern English auburn "brown, reddish brown" from Middle English aubourne, abron, abroune, abrune "light brown, yellowish brown, blond", alteration (due to conflation with Middle English brun "brown") of earlier auborne "yellowish-white, flaxen" from Old French auborne, alborne "blond, flaxen, off-white" from Medieval Latin alburnus "whitish" from Latin albus "white"

The dark haired pronoun is "der" from Old English deorc, from Proto-Germanic *derk, from either Proto-Indo-European *dʰer- (“to besmirch”) or Proto-Indo-European *derg- (“red”); perhaps both, with the latter being derived from the former.

The ginger pronoun can be "au" or "de" depending on the region (the former is considered 'official' and used by people with Received Pronunciation and General American accents, but the actual usage varies much more) due to "auburn" and "*derg-" meaning a variation of red or red-haired color.

The proposed but never implemented grey-haired pronoun is "blut" (t silent) from Old French blond, blont, of Germanic origin, from Frankish blund (“a mixed color between golden and light-brown”), from Proto-Germanic blund (“mixed, blinding”), from Proto Indo European bhlendh (“to become turbid, see badly, go blind”).  "Blu" is sometimes used by people with strawberry blonde, or dark red hair.

Collective pronoun is "fea" (U.S.A.) or "feax" (U.K., Australia), from blondenfeax (“grey-haired”), Old English blandan (“to mix”). 

So fea all, I am blu, how about all of you?


----------



## Zuu

I approve heavily


----------



## Keta

My hair is Asian-colored, but that's a bit beside the point of talking about languages.

I've collected a few language qualifications. I passed the JLPT N4, but I estimate that my current level is about JLPT N3. I'm aiming the the JLPT N2 next year's December. As for Latin... if any one of you are familiar with the National Latin Exam, I got one of those Dictionary awards. 8D



Minkow said:


> Also should I take Chinese as a course or learn Italian? Because while I speak Mandarin very fluently, I'm practically illiterate, yet Italian seems pretty hard. '~'


Do you have faith in memorizing boatloads of Chinese characters? If you don't, go for Italian. Italian shouldn't be that bad; it's a fairly straightforward language, but this is coming from the viewpoint of a Latin student here.

Also, English is as difficult as... ugh. I hate it. Most people here have been saying English is easy. For a second language, it really isn't. For instance, you can't say "there is many people"- it's "there are many people", and I get that wrong constantly. Swim goes to swum; faint and feint are pronounced the same; fly goes to flew; slay goes to slew; eat goes to ate. WHERE IS THE LOGIC IN THIS? NONE.

And we have so many uneccesary vocabulary words. What is a synod? Declamatory, abstruse, bombastic, verisimilitude, inflammable (which means the same as flammable), and several others. 

Chinese was a language probably invented by an old, old man who had too much baijiu. But, funnily enough, it's so simple that... it's great. No conjugation. You tell the time when things happened by context or stating the time. "I don't understand" literally goes to "I hear not understand" or "I see not understand", and it is a four-syllable, efficient, quick sentence. 我真的很愛中文。我因該要把它學好一點，但是沒有時間。很可惜。

Japanese sounds beautiful. It really does. However, it uses two phonetic "alphabets", if you will- syllabaries, to be exist. And then it tries to use Chinese characters. The result is a linguistic mess. One kanji, or chinese character, can have as many as 10 different pronunciations depending on context. 日本語は本当にすごく非合理的な言語です。私は日本語の発音が大好きで、文法もよく分かる気がして、でも漢字の様々のばかげたな読み方が本当に嫌いです。

I wish to learn Korean as well. Will find time sometime. But, I am near-fluent in Chinese, Japanese, and English.


----------



## Eloi

Ah, sorry about not having much time to learn Chinese, and I agree, highly isolating languages are neat. 

Anyway, I think the different readings of kanji are not unreasonable, but interesting, as you can have a lot of symbolism in just one word. Its really quite fascinating.


----------



## Tarvos

Pentimento said:


> Eh, I'm fluent in Hebrew, but I wish I could swap it for a more useful language. I mean, no one really speaks Hebrew outside of Israel. So boring.


some Jews outside of Israel speak it. My girlfriend speaks Hebrew as well, and she's only been to Israel three times. But since Jews are a bit rare nowadays I see what you mean. I don't think she's exactly fluent (or so she says - but I think she'd pick it up quickly as she already speaks four other languages fluently, and she understands basic Dutch).

Pity that ensured the only things I know are "ani ohev otakh" which is the male version of I love you iirc and "laila tov".


----------



## opaltiger

> And we have so many uneccesary vocabulary words. What is a synod? Declamatory, abstruse, bombastic, verisimilitude, inflammable (which means the same as flammable), and several others.


but but that's what makes English _interesting_ :(

and how dare you say verisimilitude is unnecessary! I use it all the time :(


----------



## Tarvos

I use bombastic all the time.


----------



## Murkrow

Eloi said:


> stuff.
> 
> So fea all, I am blu, how about all of you?


I shall adopt this immediately.

Though I was hoping for eye colour pronouns myself :(


----------



## Keta

opaltiger said:


> but but that's what makes English _interesting_ :(
> 
> and how dare you say verisimilitude is unnecessary! I use it all the time :(


I use plenty of these hunkering behemoths of the English language within my own writing. </hypocrite> D:


----------



## shy ♡

Watershed said:


> some Jews outside of Israel speak it. My girlfriend speaks Hebrew as well, and she's only been to Israel three times. But since Jews are a bit rare nowadays I see what you mean. I don't think she's exactly fluent (or so she says - but I think she'd pick it up quickly as she already speaks four other languages fluently, and she understands basic Dutch).
> 
> Pity that ensured the only things I know are "ani ohev otakh" which is the male version of I love you iirc and "laila tov".


Yeahhh it's still pretty useless. Also sounds gross. :[ Also spelling it in English looks weird. 

And I am a der. Or, in Hebrew, derrrrr. :D


----------



## Tarvos

Well my spelling is probably not even that English. My girlfriend spells it the French way, which is even more confusing, because she writes the hard "kh" as "h", which is also a more conventional h sound I believe.

I could alternatively spell it the Dutch way, but that would look retarded as fucken shit.


----------



## Eloi

Rasrap Smurf said:


> I shall adopt this immediately.
> 
> Though I was hoping for eye colour pronouns myself :(


Eh, eye colours would just have too many pronouns and much more ambiguity than hair color to make it impractical to employ, sorry.

And thank you for all the adaptors of the hair-pronouns. ^.^


----------



## Keta

Eloi said:


> Eh, eye colours would just have too many pronouns and much more ambiguity than hair color to make it impractical to employ, sorry.
> 
> And thank you for all the adaptors of the hair-pronouns. ^.^


I go to a school where 60%+ of the student body will have the same pronouns in terms of eye color. If you include natural hair color, then 60%+ of the student body will also have the same hair color. In other words, I dislike this system because it's still fairly "ambiguous" when applied to a mostly-Asian population.

Aside from that, what always intrigued me was that in Chinese, he, she, it are all pronounced "ta". Exactly the same way. So, I always felt that Chinese was less discriminatory- you refer to males, females, and even neuters with the same "word"- albeit written differently for each gender. (and, as a result, I mix up he and she in speech every so often. d'oh)

For Japanese, there are gender pronouns- however, Japanese likes to avoid using pronouns wherever possible, forcing a lot of inference on people. If anyone here watches anime, Chrona from Soul Eater's a good example of gender confusion/ambiguity. I figure it translates well into Chinese, this whole in-joke that no one can tell whether Chrona is a female or male simply from lack of pronouns.


----------



## Dannichu

Eloi, you are fantastic :D


----------



## Eloi

Dannichu said:


> Eloi, you are fantastic :D


Thank you! ^.^
Ah, I almost forgot the case system for the hair-pronouns. They are also always considered Third Person. Most of the pronoun endings come from Old English weak noun declension endings.
(light-haired/dark haired/ginger/mix/not sure or addressing a combination of hair colors)
Singular-
Subject: Auba/dur/au or de/blut (t silent)/fea or feax
Object: Auban/dure/aun or den/blut (t pronounced)/feax or enfeax
Reflexive: Aubself/durself/auself or deself/blutself (could be either)/ feaself or feaxself
Plural-
Subject: Auban/dura/auen or den/blutas (t and a silent)/fea or feax
Object: Aubena/duran/auan or dean/blutas/feau or feaxu
Reflexive: Aubselves/durselves/auselves or deselves/blutselves (could be either)/feaselves or feaxselves


----------



## cyberqwerty

I'm fluent in Portuguese.
I speak English.
I can't speak Spanish very well, but have no trouble understanding it.
My French is below mediocre now. It was way better back in high school, shame I've forgotten most of it. :C
I know very basic German.
I would like to learn Russian, but I've been too lazy to actually attempt that.


----------



## Vladimir Putin's LJ

Dannichu said:


> Mon francias c'est tres nul, mais it's tres amusant to parle it in front of my amis pas que they all study francais et then they throw livres dans my tete.
> 
> Bon temps.


interestingly your level of french is better than the level of english my french classmates have.


----------



## ultraviolet

Eloi! What about people who dye their hair (especially unnatural colours like _blue_)?

uhh I speak... english? that is, australianese. which is really english but with slacker vowels, more swearing and slang that makes sense to absolutely _nobody_.


----------



## Espeon

ultraviolet said:


> uhh I speak... english? that is, australianese. which is really english but with slacker vowels, more swearing and slang that makes sense to absolutely _nobody_.


Besides "Australianese", I think you've just perfectly summarised cockney rhyming slang.


----------



## Eloi

ultraviolet said:


> Eloi! What about people who dye their hair (especially unnatural colours like _blue_)?
> 
> uhh I speak... english? that is, australianese. which is really english but with slacker vowels, more swearing and slang that makes sense to absolutely _nobody_.


Its just judged whether or not if its light, dark, or neither. So a person with navy blue hair would be "dur" and one with sky blue would be "auba".


----------



## Jolty

hey hey guys hey guys
do you have a favourite word in any particular languages
or am I just weird because I do

German: schnell
Swedish: allihopa
Japanese: daijobu 

SCHNELL
best word ever


----------



## Zuu

Spanish: anything ending in -ito
Latin: pestilentia is up on my list


----------



## Murkrow

Jolty said:


> hey hey guys hey guys
> do you have a favourite word in any particular languages
> or am I just weird because I do


English: Maelstrom
Welsh: Popty-ping

It means microwave. Literally "ping-oven". I love it.


----------



## Not Meowth

Rasrap Smurf said:


> Popty-ping


Welsh is now officially the best language if not the best thing

Um I have lots of favourite English words but I think my favourite German one that I can remember would have to be "Schmetterling" (butterfly). And when I briefly learnt a bit of Italian I loved like every single word. "Arancione" (orange) and "asciugamano" (towel) in particular were brilliant. And most words with "ci" in them somewhere because it makes a rather nice "tchi" sound.


----------



## Espeon

In English I have a great fondness for the word "troglodyte".


----------



## opaltiger

German: Sehnsucht, which cannot be translated into English (or pretty much any other language), but very approximately means 'yearning'.


----------



## Shiny Grimer

Pepsi is pretty nice.


----------



## Tailsy

English: flare; becoming; demure; gambolling; opulent; penumbra
Italian: colombeggiare; farfalla


----------



## Jolty

oh I forgot some

German: zeppelin
Italian: cazzo

I dunno what my favourite English word is though :(

edit: NO WAIT MERCURY
I /knew/ there was something


----------



## Tailsy

ma che cazzo, Jolty?!


----------



## Blastoise Fortooate

English: ignition, conflagration, zenith, exultation, stomach
Spanish: frio, estomago


----------



## Zoltea

I like the word sesquipedalophobia in English cause it sounds funny, ^^, plus it's a long word that means fear of long words.

In French I like "good candy" cause it's "bon bonbons".
In Spanish, I dunno actually.


----------



## Not Meowth

Zoltea said:


> In French I like "good candy" cause it's "bon bonbons".


Surely it would be _bonbons bons_.


----------



## Zoltea

Meowth said:


> Surely it would be _bonbons bons_.


Nah, French grammar, bon is an adjective that comes before the noun.


----------



## Not Meowth

Zoltea said:


> Nah, French grammar, bon is an adjective that comes before the noun.


_Bons bonbons_ then? I swear I remember needing to pluralise the adjective too D':


----------



## Zoltea

Meowth said:


> _Bons bonbons_ then? I swear I remember needing to pluralize the adjective too D':


Perhaps. :P


----------



## Autumn

I took two years of French but my teacher was horrible and as such I remember none of it.

That's horrible. :( I've been wanting to learn another language for a while but after the bad experiences with that teacher I just ... don't want to anymore

ON THE SUBJECT OF ENGLISH SUCKING AS A LANGUAGE: It needs a gender-neutral pronoun and then we'd be set.


----------



## Tailsy

'it'
'they'
'them'

~*~NOVEL


----------



## Shiny Grimer

"It" isn't gender-neutral; it's lack of gender. You can't talk about someone you don't know as an "it."

"Someone's at the door; can you get it for it?"

"They" qualifies but some people don't like it. And those people are the ones in charge of making style manuals. :/ And I love singular they, I love it so much!


----------



## Zuu

"it" is gender-neutral (that's kind of what lack of gender is, really) but more than anything it's dehumanising to most people.

as for me, well. one simply has to assess my gender information listed on my profile or on this very post.


----------



## Shiny Grimer

"It" is the neuter gender i.e. something that has no gender. 
A gender-neutral pronoun implies that the person being referred to has or may have a gender but that the gender doesn't matter. There's a big difference between the two. You can't use "it" to refer to people because people have gender (at least most people identify as having gender; I'm pretty sure I phrased that wrongly though).


----------



## Leaf Joltik

I speak fluently in English (like, duh!) and I know a small bit of Chinese...

Ni hao!
Wo yao lucha.

Translates to "Hello! I would like (to have?) green tea."


----------



## Zuu

oh i think i'm picking up what you're putting down. my bad.


----------



## Tailsy

... said:


> "It" isn't gender-neutral; it's lack of gender. You can't talk about someone you don't know as an "it."
> 
> "Someone's at the door; can you get it for it?"
> 
> "They" qualifies but some people don't like it. And those people are the ones in charge of making style manuals. :/ And I love singular they, I love it so much!


Because people who make style manuals are KINGS OF ENGLISH GRAMMAR *eyeroll*

If you don't like 'it' (which is fair enough), I don't see what's wrong with 'them' and 'they'; they don't specify a gender, but aren't 'dehumanising'. They're just pronouns of cool or something.


----------



## Autumn

Tailsy said:


> If you don't like 'it' (which is fair enough), I don't see what's wrong with 'them' and 'they'; they don't specify a gender, but aren't 'dehumanising'. They're just pronouns of cool or something.


I'm fairly sure I've had English teachers in the past who were like "RRRR 'THEY' IS PLURAL YOU CAN'T USE IT" and so I had to completely reword the sentence in question.


----------



## Eloi

The correct gender neutral non-dehumanizing singular third person pronoun is "one", based off the French "on".

As in:
Third Person, Feminine, Singular: "She doesn't really like manila folders, which is how I came to the conclusion her folder is pink."
Third Person, Gender Neutral, Singular: "One doesn't really like manila folders, which is how I came to the conclusion one's folder is pink."

If it helps you can append "that" to all instances of one, but it is not necessary. It can go a long way to make it sound better tho'. 

"That one doesn't really like manila folders, which is how I came to the conclusion that one's folder is pink."


----------



## Tailsy

The issue there is that 'one' sounds like you're the Queen and that would just make people laugh. 

@Leafpool: then they are silly for thinking that English doesn't change over time!


----------



## Eloi

> The issue there is that 'one' sounds like you're the Queen and that would just make people laugh.


I don't get it, what is Queen-y about it? I suppose if I were in a country with a Queen I'd know, but that is not the case.


----------



## Kratos Aurion

Can't think of a favorite English word, but I do rather like Italian _sciagurata_.

I don't think using "one" sounds comparable to the royal we or anything like that; I just think it sounds generally terrible in anything other than formal writing. I agree that strict grammarians need to get over the use of singular they.

...Actually, just the other day I heard someone suggest simply pluralizing the subject--"readers will find that they" instead of "the reader will find that he/she/it/one/asdfasdf"--which I guess works, but obviously that doesn't always work. Singular they, man. Just deal with it.


----------



## Tailsy

It's totally Queen-y. :( You guys just don't live with a monarchy.

I just want to be all like, 'bitch shut up' to EXTREME GRAMMAR PEOPLE. I mean, it's _English_. We're just making this shit up.


----------



## Eloi

Tailsy said:


> It's totally Queen-y. :( You guys just don't live with a monarchy.
> 
> I just want to be all like, 'bitch shut up' to EXTREME GRAMMAR PEOPLE. I mean, it's _English_. We're just making this shit up.


Make shit up?

I disacorden an-uppon Þis, ænglis chaungyng is a domb conceipt!


----------



## 1. Luftballon

chinese is amazing for things like this.


----------



## Not Meowth

sreservoir said:


> chinese is amazing for things like this.


And I thought "buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo" was impressive.


----------



## Autumn

Meowth said:


> And I thought "buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo" was impressive.


Theoretically the buffalo sentence can be extended infinitely... although, unlike the Chinese one, the meaning is pretty simple and non-complex.


----------



## Ruby

...I think you're getting a bit mixed up about what "one" means.


----------



## Phantom

Favorite English word = defenestrate.


----------



## Ryan the Terrible

Meowth said:


> And I thought "buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo" was impressive.





Leafpool said:


> Theoretically the buffalo sentence can be extended infinitely... although, unlike the Chinese one, the meaning is pretty simple and non-complex.


Right, so after looking up this buffalo sentence, no word has looked less like a word than "buffalo".


----------



## Zuu

a good English word is "exile".


----------



## Ryan the Terrible

Also on the subject of epic English words, I realized about a week ago how much I like the word "volume". 8)


----------



## Dannichu

I completely overuse "one" in my essays. I use it as a sort of abstract person who might-or-might-not have an opinion on things - I'll do anything to avoid saying "I" or "you" in an academic setting. So they're full of "One could argue...", "Assuming this to be correct, one might..." and so on.

I do feel a bit like Queen Lizzy when I do it, though.

I like words that end in -age. 'Signage' and 'drainage' are particularly pleasing to me. I like to think this fondness has, in part, contributed to my love of Buffy, since the characters seem to enjoy adding this suffix to every word ever (slayage, speakage, sparkage, etc.).


----------



## Butterfree

... said:


> "It" isn't gender-neutral; it's lack of gender. You can't talk about someone you don't know as an "it."
> 
> "Someone's at the door; can you get it for it?"
> 
> "They" qualifies but some people don't like it. And those people are the ones in charge of making style manuals. :/ And I love singular they, I love it so much!


The amusing thing is this problem can actually be solved by _more_ gendering! In Icelandic, just having a noun refer to the guest would unambiguously specify that you'd refer to them by a pronoun of a particular gender, no matter what the sex or gender of the actual person at the door is.

"Það er gestur fyrir utan, opnaðu fyrir honum."

"Það er manneskja fyrir utan, opnaðu fyrir henni."

"Það er fólk fyrir utan, opnaðu fyrir því."


----------



## Shiny Grimer

Tailsy said:


> Because people who make style manuals are KINGS OF ENGLISH GRAMMAR *eyeroll*


I... didn't mean that they were the kings or even that I thought what they said matters. What's in those style manuals matters because people will judge your grammar based off what's in them. A lot of people think that singular "they" is just plain wrong. Even if they use it in speech and aren't aware of it.



> If you don't like 'it' (which is fair enough), I don't see what's wrong with 'them' and 'they'; they don't specify a gender, but aren't 'dehumanising'. They're just pronouns of cool or something.


I don't get it either. It's usually an objection along the lines of "but they is a plural pronoun!"



> The correct gender neutral non-dehumanizing singular third person pronoun is "one", based off the French "on".
> 
> If it helps you can append "that" to all instances of one, but it is not necessary. It can go a long way to make it sound better tho'.
> 
> "That one doesn't really like manila folders, which is how I came to the conclusion that one's folder is pink."


"One" is gender-neutral but it's not gender-neutral in the way you're thinking of. It's used to refer to something in an objective way, not to refer to other people. You can't say "someone's at the door; can you get it for one?" And "that one" is pretty dehumanizing; it sounds like you're talking about a chair.



> "Það er gestur fyrir utan, opnaðu fyrir honum."
> 
> "Það er manneskja fyrir utan, opnaðu fyrir henni."
> 
> "Það er fólk fyrir utan, opnaðu fyrir því."


Would that be like "That's a guest from outside, open it for him"?


----------



## Pikachu

I'm fluent in English and I speak and read Arabic rather well (writing needs a bit of practice).

As for French, my writing skills are all right. When it comes to reading, I can read rather well but I wouldn't understand any of it. Speaking is just a disaster.


----------



## Ruby

... said:


> "One" is gender-neutral but it's not gender-neutral in the way you're thinking of. It's used to refer to something in an objective way, not to refer to other people. You can't say "someone's at the door; can you get it for one?" And "that one" is pretty dehumanizing; it sounds like you're talking about a chair.


Exactly.


----------



## Tailsy

@Eloi: I'm not even going to deign that with an answer.

The point is that people who 100% pay attention to style manuals are morons. It's _English_, every rule can be subverted and kicked to the corner if that's what you want to do. If 'they' has commonly become used as a singular pronoun, then it can be used acceptably as a singular pronoun. It's like how 'whom' has fallen out of fashion - technically using 'who' in its place it grammatically incorrect, but anyone who cares is so behind the times they're squashed in its buttcheeks. 8|


----------



## Ruby

Not sure whether that's true.  Newspapers still have to be very careful about grammar or else they get hundreds of letters complaining, and there are still plenty of teachers and lecturers who quietly, even subconsciously notice these things when marking essays.  It might not be such good advice just to disregard grammar rules at leisure, precisely because there are so many people who take them seriously.


----------



## Automata heart

english as my first language, but bits of french spoken around the house because my mum spent alot of time in france when she was little. i speak a little bit of japanese, but mostly wapanese. (i'm not proud of it.) a very small bit of spanish (thanks dora the explorer and very enthosiastic children.)


----------



## Zeph

With this issue concerning 'they'/'them', I tend to... well, yeah, I guess I use those. Except whenever I or somebody else does use them, I... notice? And, y'know, sort of muse it over in my head. I've been doing that a lot recently, actually _thinking_ about English as a language and considering its occasionally odd (Or rather, eccentric) rules and such. I think too much.

As for 'one', I use it all the time in essays!... But in an almost jokelike way that I can't even explain. I tend to write essays like that, as if I'm... mocking my own writing style. I... Yeah, can't explain.

Basically, languages have been interesting me a lot recently!

(End useless post)


----------



## opaltiger

One time I got so exasperated with trying to decide which pronouns to use (it was maths coursework, of all things) that I gave up and wrote 5000 words of passive.

Let me tell you, guys: _never again._


----------



## Elliekat

I use 'they' as a genderless pronoun thing all the time, but I have to remember that when I'm taking the PSAT because that can screw you up.


----------



## Butterfree

... said:


> Would that be like "That's a guest from outside, open it for him"?


Literally translated, those were "There is a guest outside, open for him", "There is a person outside, open for her" and "There is people outside, open for it" ("people" is singular in Icelandic). "Það er" means "there is", "it is", etc.; "fyrir utan" means "outside" or "except for". "Úti" could also be used here and would also be "outside", but "fyrir utan" implies "right outside of here", whereas "úti" is more general about the location of what is outside (it could be anywhere that's not inside a building). [/Icelandic lesson]

"One" definitely doesn't work as a general-purpose gender-neutral pronoun; it's an explicitly general pronoun, used only to say "this applies to me and presumably everyone else reading". It's downright inappropriate to attempt to use it to refer to a specific third person.


----------



## Zoltea

Bachuru said:


> Literally translated, those were "There is a guest outside, open for him", "There is a person outside, open for her" and "There is people outside, open for it" ("people" is singular in Icelandic). "Það er" means "there is", "it is", etc.; "fyrir utan" means "outside" or "except for". "Úti" could also be used here and would also be "outside", but "fyrir utan" implies "right outside of here", whereas "úti" is more general about the location of what is outside (it could be anywhere that's not inside a building). [/Icelandic lesson]


It's these kinds of lessons that make me love language. 8D
Admittedly I tend to over-analyze languages to uncover their core.

There was something I recently saw on Dictionary.com...
Cellar door was considered to be the most beautiful English word. While "cellar door" has a negative connotation (to many), if the same sound was used but changed to (as said in the article) celladora, it made people think of beautiful things in nature.
It could make you wonder what in languages was carried over from another language and what words were created to describe something based on the sound of the word. This is mainly pertaining to what are now considered root languages.


----------



## Ryan the Terrible

Dear English, 

I'm sorry about the cruel things I said about you earlier in this thread. I don't know what I was thinking. Hopefully, even though sometimes I go through phases with other languages, you will always know that I love you. ^^

Forgive me?


----------



## Tailsy

Zoltea said:


> It's these kinds of lessons that make me love language. 8D
> Admittedly I tend to over-analyze languages to uncover their core.
> 
> There was something I recently saw on Dictionary.com...
> Cellar door was considered to be the most beautiful English word. While "cellar door" has a negative connotation (to many), if the same sound was used but changed to (as said in the article) celladora, it made people think of beautiful things in nature.
> It could make you wonder what in languages was carried over from another language and what words were created to describe something based on the sound of the word. This is mainly pertaining to what are now considered root languages.


But 'cellar door' is a phrase, not a word.


----------



## Zoltea

Might have said phrase, if it said word then go yell at Dictionary.com, xD


----------



## Clover

Zelador is a very cool Portuguese word. It means 'janitor', which just makes the Scrubs character that much neater.

Aleatório is another good one -- 'random'. I can't stand fome, 'hunger'. It sounds like someone with palsy trying to say 'form' or something.


----------



## Not Meowth

What's the Portuguese for "knifewrench"?


----------



## Dannichu

Midnight said:


> I can't stand fome, 'hunger'. It sounds like someone with palsy trying to say 'form' or something.


Aww, I like it! I also like the French one for hunger, "faim".

Basically, when I lived with my aforementioned language-student housemates, if I was feeling both hungry and lazy, I'd follow them around the house saying "J'ai faim!" until they caved and cooked me something.


----------



## Elliekat

My favorite Spanish word is 'el pastel', for cake. The word just... feels nice when I say it, haha XD


----------



## Zuu

i studied Russian verb stems last night!

i'm probably going to get unlazy soon and study Swedish seriously, though.


----------



## Clover

Meowth said:


> What's the Portuguese for "knifewrench"?


Faca... ... wrench. [googles] Faca-chave-inglesa! ... Wait, 'wrench' is 'English key'? What is that supposed to signify about the English.


----------



## Vladimir Putin's LJ

In Portugal, iirc wrench is chave de fendas, which means... er. Crack key? Crack as in a crack in the pavement ok



Midnight said:


> Zelador is a very cool Portuguese word. It means 'janitor', which just makes the Scrubs character that much neater.
> 
> Aleatório is another good one -- 'random'. I can't stand fome, 'hunger'. It sounds like someone with palsy trying to say 'form' or something.


Zelador is a word I've never heard, but 'ter zelo' means being assiduous and stuff. Maybe it's a Brazilian word though?

I like 'trengo/a', which is a word from Porto that means 'silly'.


----------



## Not Meowth

Midnight said:


> Faca... ... wrench. [googles] Faca-chave-inglesa! ... Wait, 'wrench' is 'English key'? What is that supposed to signify about the English.


Every morning when we leave the house we bolt the door shut and have to undo it with a wrench when we get home
...is that not how the rest of the world does it D:


----------



## Zuu

hej grabbar. jag är riktigt lär mig Svenska nu! det är ganska jättebra. jävla älskar det. jag kunde använde en större vokabulär och min kunskap om Svensk grammatik är väldigt dålig, nå, hela tiden. men ... jo! ganska kul.

(jag hoppas att om någon kan tala Svenska, den ska tro inte att min Svenska är rolig ... )


----------



## Eloi

Midnight said:


> Zelador is a very cool Portuguese word.


Is it phonetically similar to "cellar door" said with Received Pronunciation?


----------



## Clover

Eloi said:


> Is it phonetically similar to "cellar door" said with Received Pronunciation?


Haha, I hadn't thought of it that way, but yeah, it is!


----------



## Aobaru

Mi gato Bear esta en mi cama. El es el segundo gato que tengo. Mi otro gata es Cheesecake. Ella es una puta desde el infierno. Ella solo te ama cuando tiene hambre.

_El fin_


----------



## Zuu

lol, i actually understood half of that. i still hate Spanish though. Spanska är ett skitig språk.


----------



## Teh Ebil Snorlax

In a shocking swerve from two years ago, my Spanish is now _far_ superior to my Irish. I'm pretty much devouring the grammar, my vocab is building steadily and I'm getting pretty good at pronunciation too.


----------



## Zeph

Aobaru said:


> Mi gato Bear esta en mi cama. El es el segundo gato que tengo. Mi otro gata es Cheesecake. Ella es una puta desde el infierno. Ella solo te ama cuando tiene hambre.
> 
> _El fin_


That I understood that pretty much perfectly, despite having been taught very basic Spanish for nothing more than a few months three years ago, is a pleasing show of how similar the Romance languages are.

But French is still better.


----------



## Aobaru

Zephyrous Castform said:


> But French is still better.


Agreed, in the sense that it sounds better and you feel cool speaking it. Spanish, especially in the Southern US, is so commonplace that it has lost its novelty.


----------



## Clover

Zephyrous Castform said:


> Aobaru said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Mi gato Bear esta en mi cama. El es el segundo gato que tengo. Mi otro gata es Cheesecake. Ella es una puta desde el infierno. Ella solo te ama cuando tiene hambre.
> 
> El fin
> 
> 
> 
> That I understood that pretty much perfectly, despite having been taught very basic Spanish for nothing more than a few months three years ago, is a pleasing show of how similar the Romance languages are.
> 
> But French is still better.
Click to expand...

I agree! I was surprised that I caught every word, even if it was kind of like trien tu reed Inglesh speld fonetikalee. ("Wait, they're all spelled wrong... but they all make sense! Ack!")

I feel like there ~aren't enough~ gender changes there. "Mi gato" and "mi gata" are both correct? As well as "mi otro gata"? (cf. "minha outra gata" in Portuguese.) Also, "el" is both "he" and masculine definitive article? How confusing.

Portuguese is totally, totally better.


----------



## Shiny Grimer

Corrections:
Mi gato Bear está en mi cama. El es el segundo gato que he tenido. Mi otra gata se llama Cheesecake. Ella es una puta de mierda. Solo te ama cuando tiene hambre.

I know y'all are jealous that Spanish is so easy and accessible as opposed to dying languages (French) or useless languages (Portuguese), but please try to make it less obvious. We're too busy basking in our awesome.

Just kidding!

...not


----------



## Zuu

ni skulle studer Svenska! är ett riktigt bra och intressant språk, mer intressant än Spanska jag tror! alla skulle studer Svenska. _alla_.


----------



## Shiny Grimer

Nej, jag vill inte stude Svenska. Spanska är en intressant språk. Jag talar Spanska. Svenska är inte användbar språk. Endast svenskar talar svenska.


----------



## Zuu

... said:


> Nej, jag vill inte stude Svenska. Spanska är en intressant språk. Jag talar Spanska. Svenska är inte användbar språk. Endast svenskar talar svenska.


lol va

svenska är inte användbar???? också lol, jag haft missförstod vad du sade, jag trodde att du sade "svenskar talar inte svenska", vilket var roligt, och jag var på väg att saga "men alla har dåliga brytningar om språk på engelska". vilket är också sant. men jo, jag gissar att bara svenskar talar svenska. ändå jag studerar svenska. fan, blir mitt svenska bättre?

naturligtvis, jag är säker att mitt grammatik är mycket dåligt. 

jag tror ändå att spanska är skitigt

also, i mostly watch movies, try to watch TV, try to read various websites, and allow my Swedish friend to correct me. which is often.


----------



## Zeph

... said:


> dying languages (French)


...Dying?

J'n't'aime plus, espèce de méchante :C

MISE AU POINT: Le suédois a l'air vraiment joli :3 (Et, en effet, tous les langues scandinaves l'ont aussi, ça.)


----------



## Music Dragon

Jag fattar inte vad ni håller på med. Svenska suger ju! Lär er esperanto istället.


----------



## Zuu

Music Dragon said:


> Jag fattar inte vad ni håller på med. Svenska suger ju! Lär er esperanto istället.


; ;

neeejjj


----------



## Music Dragon

Det går ganska bra för dig, tycker jag... Jag menar, det märks ganska tydligt att ditt språk är influerat av engelskan, men det är i alla fall begripligt. Du är ungefär på nivå med Google Translate, skulle jag säga!


----------



## Zuu

Music Dragon said:


> Det går ganska bra för dig, tycker jag... Jag menar, det märks ganska tydligt att ditt språk är influerat av engelskan, men det är i alla fall begripligt. Du är ungefär på nivå med Google Translate, skulle jag säga!


åh, tack! tycker jag, haha. Google Translate är inte väldigt bra ... men det är bra för mig, jag gissar. och jo, jag visste om engelskan tinget, men jag pratar inte mycket med svenskar. :(


----------



## Tarvos

För helvete.


----------



## Auraflash

I speak fluently in English, and I'm currently learning Spanish in school, and Korean on my own time. I'd say I'm okay-ish in Spanish, but it's only my second year :/

My Korean is actually fine, sorta, because I actually know the alphabet unlike other Koreans in my school, a much better accent and pronunciation, and a slightly expanded vocabulary, but about a 10th of it is how to insult/curse at people XD. Just in case someone curses at me in Korean and I can respond back so I don't look like an idiot.

I kinda want to learn Chinese too. Besides, most of my friends are Chinese.


----------



## Tarvos

ICH KOMM AUS CHINA


> Det går ganska bra för dig, tycker jag... Jag menar, det märks ganska tydligt att ditt språk är influerat av engelskan, men det är i alla fall begripligt. Du är ungefär på nivå med Google Translate, skulle jag säga!


Also, through context and rudimentary Swedish:

That's going very good for you, I think... I believe, at this point in time your speech is influenced by English, but that's understandable. You have more or less the level of Google Translate, I should say!

My Swedish sucks. I don't know any of the words or grammar actively.


----------



## Lord of the Fireflies

ah le francais quelle langue aux subtilités agacantes que meme moi en tant que QUÉBÉCOIS d'origine trouve d'un fendage de cul assez spectaculaire.


----------



## Tarvos

ah le francais, where every vowel sounds like every other vowel: "euuuhhh"


----------



## Not Meowth

Tarvos said:


> ah le francais, where every vowel sounds like every other vowel: "euuuhhh"


I thought that was just the sound you make in the pause between sentences.


----------



## Zuu

Tarvos, den här filmen är för dig.


----------



## Aenrhien

I'm fluent in English.

(僕は)日本語の学生です。 / (Boku wa) Nihongo no gakusei desu.

I'm also interested in learning French and Swedish.


----------



## Autumn

oh hey, the languages thread is back up! this means I can ask a question I've been meaning to ask for a while of non-native English speakers:

at least to us americans, most non-English languages have something that defines them. (to us. when we don't speak those languages.) Spanish is defined by taking English words and putting o's (and sometimes a's) at the end of words, French is defined by having lots and lots of vowel clusters that are either unpronounceable or just ... aren't pronounced in general (so you want to speak French? step one: the last four letters of any given word are silent. Congratulations, you speak French!). German has harsh consonant sounds, gratuitous use of the "aye" sound (as in "ein"), and lots of strange vowel combinations that never seem to sound like they should. (Even worse than French I mean.) The example I gave when telling this to my friends was something like "Ich bein den webenhauser!" or something which obviously doesn't make any sense but sounds vaguely German! I could go on but I'm getting bugged to go get ready for school so I'm just gonna end here.

but my question is: most languages have something that non-speakers of that language think defines the language. What defines English?


----------



## Not Meowth

Polymetric Sesquialtera said:


> "Ich bein den webenhauser!"


"I bein the weave hauser!"

what the hell google translate I swear "bein" means something ._.
damnit now I wish I still learned German screw you leafpool


----------



## Autumn

I don't know German either. I was just making something up for the point of having an example. :V

while I'm here, I can characterize Italian and Latin as well: Italian is a language where every word (or at least every name) ends in either i or o. The language itself is characterized with "a" sounds after everything (It's-a me, Mario!). Latin is characterized with having lots and lots of words suspiciously similar to English words except ending in "us" and "um" instead of whatever the English words end in.


----------



## 1. Luftballon

Polymetric Sesquialtera said:


> oh hey, the languages thread is back up! this means I can ask a question I've been meaning to ask for a while of non-native English speakers:
> 
> at least to us americans, most non-English languages have something that defines them. (to us. when we don't speak those languages.) Spanish is defined by taking English words and putting o's (and sometimes a's) at the end of words, French is defined by having lots and lots of vowel clusters that are either unpronounceable or just ... aren't pronounced in general (so you want to speak French? step one: the last four letters of any given word are silent. Congratulations, you speak French!). German has harsh consonant sounds, gratuitous use of the "aye" sound (as in "ein"), and lots of strange vowel combinations that never seem to sound like they should. (Even worse than French I mean.) The example I gave when telling this to my friends was something like "Ich bein den webenhauser!" or something which obviously doesn't make any sense but sounds vaguely German! I could go on but I'm getting bugged to go get ready for school so I'm just gonna end here.
> 
> but my question is: most languages have something that non-speakers of that language think defines the language. What defines English?


english is defined by "wtf why does that not work the way this does? it's the same damn thing!"


----------



## Zeph

Yeah, I'm pretty sure English is defined by its infinite exceptions to its own rules.


----------



## opaltiger

Meowth said:


> "I bein the weave hauser!"
> 
> what the hell google translate I swear "bein" means something ._.
> damnit now I wish I still learned German screw you leafpool


What the hell, google translate? 'Bein' means leg! Maybe it's case sensitive?


----------



## MentheLapin

opaltiger said:


> What the hell, google translate? 'Bein' means leg! Maybe it's case sensitive?


Could 'bein' not just be a typo? As in, meant to be 'bin'?


----------



## Music Dragon

Tarvos said:


> Also, through context and rudimentary Swedish:
> 
> That's going very good for you, I think... I believe, at this point in time your speech is influenced by English, but that's understandable. You have more or less the level of Google Translate, I should say!


_Jag menar, det märks ganska tydligt att ditt språk är influerat av engelskan, men det är i alla fall begripligt._ I mean, it's fairly obvious that your language is influenced by English, but it's comprehensible anyway.

Otherwise correct.



sreservoir said:


> english is defined by "wtf why does that not work the way this does? it's the same damn thing!"


Yup.


----------



## Autumn

sreservoir said:


> english is defined by "wtf why does that not work the way this does? it's the same damn thing!"


that's actually what I was thinking but I was wondering if there was anything else. x3


----------



## Lorem Ipsum

Quelqu'une a mentionné le français? La langue la plus belle dans le monde entier? Ah, je l'adore, mais je dois arreter et commencer à tenter d'apprendre l'espagnol pour mes examens dans trois semaines.


----------



## Zeph

Lorem Ipsum said:


> Quelqu'une a mentionné le français? La langue la plus belle dans le monde entier? Ah, je l'adore


J'suis tout a fait d'accord. :D Le francais fait partie de ma vie, en fait. Il n'y a aucun jour ou je ne passe pas de temps en le parlant, soit a quelqu'un d'autre, soit a moi-meme.

Et a ce type-la qui a dit que le francais ne consiste que des voyelles 'euhhh' - Tu me rends triste :C

(Mon clavier est débile. Les seuls accents que je peux insérer, ce sont les aigues. Pardonnez-moi.)


----------



## Tarvos

Monsieur, je vais a la Belgique souvent et quand je suis la, tous les gens parlent comme ils savent seulement une voyelle. J'ecoute le meme. Bluh bluh bluh.

Et aussi, les gens a Bruxelles ont toujours oublie leur neerlandais. Mais monsieur, JE NE VEUX PAS PARLER FRANCAIS

Alors chaque fois je dois parler francais, c'etait tres mauvais. Moi je prefere l'allemand...


----------



## Superbird

I regret dropping French when I started Middle School. Otherwise I'd be able to understand the above conversation.


----------



## Tailsy

HAW

SON

WHIT IS RANG WAE JUST SPEAKIN' THE FUCKIN' QUEEN'S ENGLISH AE?
AH MEAN, IF YE LIVE HERE THEN YE SHID SPEAK THE FUCKIN LANGUAGE OR AH'LL FUCKIN BOTTLE YE IF YE KEN WHIT AH MEAN


----------



## Tarvos

Cos that's not what yer blabberin'?


----------



## Tailsy

Shut yer piehole, clever clogs.


----------



## Shiny Grimer

In Spanish, English is defined by adding 'ation' to the end of every word. As in "information."

In general, American English is marked by its "r" sounds. When people imitate American English, it's basically "rarara McDonalds rererer Burger King." So yeah, lots of "r" sounds and brand names.


----------



## Zuu

... said:


> In Spanish, English is defined by adding 'ation' to the end of every word. As in "information."
> 
> In general, American English is marked by its "r" sounds. When people imitate American English, it's basically "rarara McDonalds rererer Burger King." So yeah, lots of "r" sounds and brand names.


haha, that's hilarious. i've never heard that before.


----------



## Ryan the Terrible

... said:


> In Spanish, English is defined by adding 'ation' to the end of every word. As in "information."
> 
> In general, American English is marked by its "r" sounds. When people imitate American English, it's basically "rarara McDonalds rererer Burger King." So yeah, lots of "r" sounds and brand names.


That's amazing. xD

I mean I always knew our R sounds were a lot different from other languages, but I didn't know it was _that_ emphasized.


----------



## Shiny Grimer

The American English R is very rare among languages.


----------



## Whirlpool

Hm. That's interesting. Mandarin Chinese and English both use similar R sounds. For some reason, I've always thought I was pronouncing that wrong when I spoke Chinese.

...now that I think about it, that might be the reason why I have so much trouble saying the French R.

Chinese has no conjugation, which is something I love about it. At least, as far as I know.


----------



## Music Dragon

The English language also uses the present participle a lot, since there's a distinct and important difference between, say, "I eat dinner" and "I am eating dinner". There isn't in most languages I know.


----------



## Zeph

Tarvos said:


> Monsieur, je vais a la Belgique souvent et quand je suis la, tous les gens parlent comme ils savent seulement une voyelle. J'ecoute le meme. Bluh bluh bluh.
> 
> Et aussi, les gens a Bruxelles ont toujours oublie leur neerlandais. Mais monsieur, JE NE VEUX PAS PARLER FRANCAIS
> 
> Alors chaque fois je dois parler francais, c'etait tres mauvais. Moi je prefere l'allemand...


Alors, peut-etre que ca, c'est l'accent belge? Il faut admettre qu'oui, il y aurait des accents qui exagerent certaines voyelles... Mais seulement a la meme mesure qu'en anglais, et, heuh, tous les autres langues, je suppose... Mais d'ailleurs, oui, j'estime que j'ai un peu tort quand meme! Pardonne-moi, mon cheri.


----------



## Tarvos

Il y a pas un accent de Bruxelles... la bas la langue ressemble le francais en general. Dans les provinces il y a des accents horribles, mais pas a Bruxelles. C'est plus ou moins la meme langue on parle a Paris.

Mais ils disent "septante" et "nonante", pas soixante-dix et quatre-vingts-et-dix.


----------



## Clover

Aqui é um exemplo do português de minha aula de filosofia eu tinha o outro dia.

"De acordo com Renan, a filosofia teria surgido na Grécia por causa do talento e do engenho heleno. Foi uma criação genuinamente grega. Outros autores, como Cornford, afirmam que a filosofia é o resultado de uma miscelânea de culturas. ...

"Cosmológica é o estudo do universo. De onde viemos? Para onde vamos? Do que somos feitos? O que move todas as coisas? O que provoca a mudança?"

Acho que é bem interessante que eu posso ler esses exemplos de frança e espanhol tão facilmente. Eu só comecei aprender português depois eu cheguei em Brasil, seis meses atrás. Agora fico feliz que eu escolhi Brasil, porque parece que português é uma língua muito bom pra saber se quer aprender muitas línguas românticas.

E agora eu quero VPLJ e Arcanine e qualquer outra pessoa que fala português pra ver e consertar o meu português. (Estou curiosa se o português brasileiro é bem diferente que o português do Portugal. Eu ouvi falar muitas coisas sobre o "sotaque estranho" do Portugal, haha. ... O que eu devo escrever pra 'haha', haha? Segundo dos Twitters e orkuts de minha irmãs aqui, é "hsuahsuahsua". ... haha.)


----------



## Tarvos

I think Brazilian and Lusitanian Portuguese differ significantly. At least that's what I've been told.


----------



## Lorem Ipsum

Zephyrous Castform said:


> J'suis tout a fait d'accord. :D Le francais fait partie de ma vie, en fait. Il n'y a aucun jour ou je ne passe pas de temps en le parlant, soit a quelqu'un d'autre, soit a moi-meme.
> 
> Et a ce type-la qui a dit que le francais ne consiste que des voyelles 'euhhh' - Tu me rends triste :C
> 
> (Mon clavier est débile. Les seuls accents que je peux insérer, ce sont les aigues. Pardonnez-moi.)


J'ai dû apprendre les accents sur le clavier - je peux les faire maintenant. Normalement c'est un combination de "Alt+02+deux autres numéros", par example, pour écrire "è", on pousserait "Alt+0232". C'est une matière d'experimentation.

Les écoles sont vraiment mals avec les cours de français - nous lisons et nous écoutons toujours, mais jamais nous ne parlons ou écrivons, et ça m'embête beaucoup - comment allons-nous apprendre la langue si nous ne sommes pas donnés l'opportunité de pratiquer la langue? Je pense que c'est la raison que les jeunes anglais ne peuvent pas parler le français assez bon, ou l'espagnol ou l'allemand - n'importe quoi.

Ce que je donnerais pour quelqu'une qui peut échanger des messages avec moi en français, si seulement pour la pratique...

Par la voie, si j'ai fait des erreurs (et surtout si vous parlez le français comme langue maternelle), n'avez pas peur de me corriger!


----------



## Zeph

Oui; j'utilise 0232 pour le 'è' souvent, mais les autres, alors, j'sais pas.

Et en fait j'suis pas d'accord - a mon école, on parle et écrit plus souvent qu'l'on écoute ou lit - mais peut-etre que ca, c'est seulement chez moi, a le mien... J'sais pas!

Non, tu parles (ou bien, tu écris) le francais tres bien, il me semble! La seule probleme, c'est que ta langue a l'air d'etre influencée par l'anglais - Tu as utilisé 'par la voie' et 'ce que je donnerais', ce qu'il s'agit des expressions anglaises, mais ca, c'est pas une erreur grave!

Moi, bien entendu que j'suis pas parfait en ce qui concerne parler le francais - pas du tout! Donc, euh, correcte(z)-moi s'il le faut, moi également!

(En fait a ce moment-ci, il se peut qu'je ne fasse aucun sens; je suis trop fatigué car je viens de jouer dans une pièce de théatre musicale... Hein, ben, il faut bien qu'j'dorme...)


----------



## Clover

Midnight said:


> Eu só comecei aprender português depois eu cheguei em Brasil, seis meses atrás. Agora fico feliz que eu escolhi Brasil, porque parece que português é uma língua muito bom pra saber se quer aprender muitas línguas românticas.


"Oh, Melina! Pode ver um negócio que eu escrevi e verificar se tudo deu certo?" "Mmm... Você escreveu mal aqui e aqui -- '/no/ Brasil' e 'muito /boa/'." "Ah, obrigada!"




Tarvos said:


> I think Brazilian and Lusitanian Portuguese differ significantly. At least that's what I've been told.


É, talvez que sim (ao menos, mais que a diferencia entre o inglês dos Estados Unidos e da Inglaterra), mas eu não sei como, exatamente...

Aí, qualquer um entende? Sinto como estou escrevendo pra ninguém, haha...


----------



## Tarvos

You can indeed use the alt codes but using them everytime is just fuck you.


----------



## 1. Luftballon

pfft just get a compose key. āéìôǔỹ and stuff.


----------



## Shiny Grimer

Install an international keyboard for fun. I use US-international. It makes typing so much fún. Thãt ïs the jôy of it.


----------



## Zeph

I do have a French keyboard installed, but it is horrid to use since so many things are in different places. (I mean, for example, M and ' are swapped, which is fine I guess, until you realise that (mostly) all the accented vowels are not created by pressing apostrophe and then the vowel or whatever, as one would expect, but instead by working out where its specific key is... It takes a lot of getting used to. (Also, you have to hold shift to get numbers! Most dreadful.)


----------



## 1. Luftballon

eh, my capslock key doesn't get much use otherwise, so I just use that.


----------



## PK

Native english speaker, decent spanish, don't get to use it much though.


----------



## ultraviolet

Tailsy said:
			
		

> HAW
> 
> SON
> 
> WHIT IS RANG WAE JUST SPEAKIN' THE FUCKIN' QUEEN'S ENGLISH AE?
> AH MEAN, IF YE LIVE HERE THEN YE SHID SPEAK THE FUCKIN LANGUAGE OR AH'LL FUCKIN BOTTLE YE IF YE KEN WHIT AH MEAN


AWWW WHAAAAT TH' FACK ARE YOU TALKIN' 'BOUT? MAAAAATE. THEM FUCKIN' POMS DUNNO ANYTHING 'BOUT TALKIN' 'STRAAALIAN!


----------



## Not Meowth

ultraviolet said:


> AWWW WHAAAAT TH' FACK ARE YOU TALKIN' 'BOUT? MAAAAATE. THEM FUCKIN' POMS DUNNO ANYTHING 'BOUT TALKIN' 'STRAAALIAN!


you forgot to say crikey


----------



## ultraviolet

no I didn't

nobody ever says crikey

except for Steve Irwin but he's dead so


----------



## Tarvos

Top bloke who says crikey, hahaha...


----------



## Not Meowth

ultraviolet said:


> no I didn't
> 
> nobody ever says crikey
> 
> except for Steve Irwin but he's dead so


yes but lots of people outside australia think everyone there talks exactly like him and if you don't you're shattering their hopes and dreams
why would you do that uv :(


----------



## Blastoise Fortooate

Tailsy said:
			
		

> HAW
> 
> SON
> 
> WHIT IS RANG WAE JUST SPEAKIN' THE FUCKIN' QUEEN'S ENGLISH AE?
> AH MEAN, IF YE LIVE HERE THEN YE SHID SPEAK THE FUCKIN LANGUAGE OR AH'LL FUCKIN BOTTLE YE IF YE KEN WHIT AH MEAN





ultraviolet said:


> AWWW WHAAAAT TH' FACK ARE YOU TALKIN' 'BOUT? MAAAAATE. THEM FUCKIN' POMS DUNNO ANYTHING 'BOUT TALKIN' 'STRAAALIAN!


Y'ALL'VE GOTTA PRO-NUN-SEE-ATE YALL'S AICHES, 'ER ELSE TH' WRATH'A GOD S'GUNNA COME DOWN ON ALL A' Y'ALL! SERSLY, THIS'S AMERCA AND NOBODY ISN'T GONNER SPEAK AMERCAN HER, EVEN IF Y'ALL AIN'T AMERCANS

**********-----------------------------------------------------
**********-----------------------------------------------------
**********-----------------------------------------------------
**********-----------------------------------------------------
**********-----------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------

_*AMERCA 4 EVER Y'ALL*_


----------



## Superbird

LOL

^That's the only chatspeak I can speak fluently. Does chatspeak count as a language, BTW?


----------



## surskitty

No.


----------



## Tarvos

American English is awful though


----------



## Autumn

Tarvos said:


> American English is awful though


correction: _Southern_ American English is awful


----------



## Shiny Grimer

Southern American English is lovely. I don't know what you all are talking about.


----------



## Zuu

i don't know if i mentioned this.

but anyway, i'd like to continue my Swedish learning, mostly getting better at speaking and improving vocabulary (even though if i ever go to Sweden i'll just be speaking English anyway ~_~). but i also want to pursue rudimentary knowledge in Russian (for the sake of having a Slavic) and Greek. then for dead languages (because i love those things) Ancient Greek and Old Norse. ja.


----------



## Tailsy

"Glaswegians have the most attractive accent for Japanese people learning to speak English, a study has concluded."

Scottish people: full of rage, oozing _sex_. And education.


----------



## Lorem Ipsum

Zuu said:


> i don't know if i mentioned this.
> 
> but anyway, i'd like to continue my Swedish learning, mostly getting better at speaking and improving vocabulary (even though if i ever go to Sweden i'll just be speaking English anyway ~_~). but i also want to pursue rudimentary knowledge in Russian (for the sake of having a Slavic) and Greek. then for dead languages (because i love those things) Ancient Greek and Old Norse. ja.


Ancient Greek is the most ridiculously cool language that has ever been spoken. If you want me to give you (sort of) lessons, drop me a line via PM :)


----------



## Tarvos

Polymetric Sesquialtera said:


> correction: _Southern_ American English is awful


No, all American English is awful


----------



## Aobaru

Tarvos said:


> No, all American English is awful


Hey, apart from pronunciation differences and some vocabulary, standard American and British English aren't that different.

I agree about Southern American English, though.


----------



## Tarvos

It's the pronunciation and awful spelling that does it. The Brits make it sound better.


----------



## Rainbow Dash

My native language is Icelandic so i speak "perfect" icelandic :p

I also am pretty good in writing English, often gotten compliments on that, cause I'm a foreigner. :P 

I suck at speaking English tho, person to person. >_<


Ég er fokking stoltur íslendingur, og það er allavega nóg af gömlum bílum hérna, en samt ekki af Lödum, Var líka rosa mikið af Skódum. :(  Allavega nógu öruggt land! :3
Íslenska er bezta tungumálið. ;)


----------



## Lorem Ipsum

Cheerilee said:


> My native language is Icelandic so i speak "perfect" icelandic :p
> 
> I also am pretty good in writing English, often gotten compliments on that, cause im a foreigner. :P
> 
> I suck in speaking English tho, person to person. >_<


I suck *at* speaking English. Hope you don't mind the correction D:

Mon prof de français m'a rappelé que j'ai mes examens de français ce juin (une année tôt) - quelque chose que j'ai oublié complètement. Eurgh, je dois me preparer pour un examen dans lequel je dois parler pour cinq minutes. Je ne veux pas du tout perdre des notes, mais ma prononciation peut être mieux. S'il y a des français ici, je peut-être télécharger un enregistrement de moi ici pour critiquer...


----------



## Teh Ebil Snorlax

I speak English fluently. Obviously.

Ní bhfuil mé liofa as Gaeilge ach tá mé ábáilte cúpla focail a chaint.

Soy razonablemente bueno con la gramática Española pero no tengo mucho vocabulario, un problema que estoy intentando corregir.


----------



## Zuu

"I am reasonably good with Spanish grammar but I don't know much vocabulary, a problem that I intend to correct"?
guessing out of Latin and seeing Spanish 24/7 in Texas.


----------



## Zeph

Lorem Ipsum said:


> Mon prof de français m'a rappelé que j'ai mes examens de français ce juin (une année tôt) - quelque chose que j'ai oublié complètement. Eurgh, je dois me preparer pour un examen dans lequel je dois parler pour cinq minutes. Je ne veux pas du tout perdre des notes, mais ma prononciation peut être mieux. S'il y a des français ici, je peut-être télécharger un enregistrement de moi ici pour critiquer...


Alors, moi, j'suis pas francais moi-meme, mais, comme je l'étudie depuis, euh, six ans, et comme j'ai eu au moins trois profs differents (et également j'ai un corres francais avec qui je parle fréquemment) qui étaient/sont francaise, il m'semble que j'ai une bonne idée de comment un vrai accent/une vrai prononciation francais doit sonner! Malheureusement, j'crois qu'il n'y a aucun francais ici sur tCoD... Donc si tu veux vraiment, j'peux t'aider, mais j'comprendrais si tu prefererais plutot un vrai francais XD

(Aussi, les examens orales sont rarement aussi difficle qu'ils ne le semblent avant d'avoir les passés! Bonne chance!)


----------



## Teh Ebil Snorlax

Zuu said:


> "I am reasonably good with Spanish grammar but I don't know much vocabulary, a problem that I intend to correct"?
> guessing out of Latin and seeing Spanish 24/7 in Texas.


That's what I was going for, yeah.


----------



## Vladimir Putin's LJ

> Mon prof de français m'a rappelé que j'ai mes examens de français *en* juin (une année *plus tôt que la norme*) - quelque chose que *j'avais* *complètement oublié*. Eurgh, je dois me preparer pour un examen dans lequel je dois parler *pendant* cinq minutes. Je ne veux pas du tout perdre de notes, mais ma prononciation *pourrait être meilleure*. S'il y a des français ici, je *peux* peut-être télécharger un enregistrement de moi ici pour *recevoir des critiques*...





Zephyrous Castform said:


> Alors, moi, j'suis pas francais moi-meme, mais, comme je l'étudie depuis, euh, six ans, et comme j'ai eu au moins trois profs differents (et *j'ai également* un corres francais avec qui je parle fréquemment) qui étaient/sont *francais*, il m'semble que j'ai une bonne idée de comment un vrai accent/une vrai prononciation *francaise* doit sonner! Malheureusement, j'crois qu'il n'y a aucun francais ici sur tCoD... Donc si tu veux vraiment, j'peux t'aider, mais j'comprendrais si tu prefererais plutot un vrai francais XD
> 
> (Aussi, les examens *oraux* sont rarement aussi difficiles qu'ils ne le semblent avant de *les avoir réussis*! Bonne chance!)


I TOOK THE LIBERTY OF CORRECTING SOME STUFF THAT SOUNDED WONKY (sometimes just wrong and sometimes grammatically okay but not very natural-sounding), IF YOU DON'T WANT ME TO I'LL STOP. I've lived in Brussels all my life and I don't have any noticeable foreign interferences in my accent, so I'd be glad to listen to your clip or record one or something :o either way I know accents.

Either way hello I speak Portuguese, Dutch, French and English, if you want to train in any of these feel free to ask. My spelling in French and Dutch might not be as good as my Portuguese and English since I don't have any classes in those languages, but grammar and such are fine.

I'm slowly learning Russian but since I've got a Swedish love interest I've  been curious about that as well :v it looks super easy and I can already understand some of it (thanks to my awesome Dutch + English knowledge combo) but I don't know, audience, what do you think.


----------



## Zuu

VPLJ, jo, svenska är ganska lätt. är lättare än Ryska, naturligtvis. kanske MD eller jag kunde lära dig några. jag är inte valdig bra på att prata svenska men ... jag vet inte. 

p.s. använda Google Translate


----------



## Spatz

Applejack said:


> "Glaswegians have the most attractive accent for Japanese people learning to speak English, a study has concluded."
> 
> *Scottish people: full of rage, oozing sex. And education.*


No I'm not.


----------



## Zeph

Vladimir Putin's LJ said:


> I TOOK THE LIBERTY OF CORRECTING SOME STUFF THAT SOUNDED WONKY (sometimes just wrong and sometimes grammatically okay but not very natural-sounding), IF YOU DON'T WANT ME TO I'LL STOP.


Thank you, corrections are better than, erm, no corrections! (Although all the French French teachers I've had have been female, hence francaise and not francais, but you didn't know that! Also surely the second instance should have stayed as francais, since although prononciation is feminine, accent is masculine and one always defaults to masculine plural for multiple nouns? Oh, and I used 'passer' since I was talking more in the sense of 'before having sat them' rather than 'before having passed them'; I'm aware of the whole passer =/= pass in the context of exams thing, heh. But thank you anyway :3)

Annddd yeah you'd probably be more beneficial to Lorem Ipsum than I.


----------



## Zero Moment

Interested in learning Japanese.


----------



## Dannichu

Mon francais ce n'est pas bon. Je voudrais continue learning dans some point, mais je suis tres poor et n'afford lessons pas. Sur le other main, it would probablement be pour le best if je just gave it up as a cause perdu.


----------



## Superbird

Dannichu said:


> Mon francais ce n'est pas bon. Je voudrais continue learning dans some point, mais je suis tres poor et n'afford lessons pas. Sur le other main, it would probablement be pour le best if je just gave it up as a cause perdu.


this. Totally this.


----------



## Not Meowth

I applied to to a French module next year at university the other day :D

I suppose it's somewhat worrying that they put me in a post-GCSE-level class because I told them about my French GCSE and I've just realised my French is only marginally better than Dannichu's, but. :3


----------



## Phantom

It's weird, I took spanish most of my life, but when I went on a foreign exhange for a month in Mexico city my grammar and spelling... well. No puedo escribir en español muy bien. Pero lo hablo muy bien. Lo utilizo todo el tiempo en mi trabajo. Pero estoy un fallo con la gramática y el deletreo. Utilizo mucho argot.


----------



## Aobaru

Phantom said:


> It's weird, I took spanish most of my life, but when I went on a foreign exhange for a month in Mexico city my grammar and spelling... well. No puedo escribir en español muy bien. Pero lo hablo muy bien. Lo utilizo todo el tiempo en mi trabajo. Pero estoy un fallo con la gramática y el deletreo. Utilizo mucho argot.


That's funny because I'm the opposite. Puedo escribir muy muy bien, pero no puedo hablar muy bien.


----------



## Zeph

Dannichu said:


> _Mon francais, c'est pas bien. Je voudrais continuer a l'apprendre a un moment, mais je suis tres pauvre, et les lecons, je n'en ai pas les moyens. A l'autre part, il vaudrait mieux probablement si je le renoncerai tout simplement; c'est une véritable cause perdue._


:3

...Sorry, had to.


----------



## Vladimir Putin's LJ

Zephyrous Castform said:


> Thank you, corrections are better than, erm, no corrections! (Although all the French French teachers I've had have been female, hence francaise and not francais, but you didn't know that! Also surely the second instance should have stayed as francais, since although prononciation is feminine, accent is masculine and one always defaults to masculine plural for multiple nouns? Oh, and I used 'passer' since I was talking more in the sense of 'before having sat them' rather than 'before having passed them'; I'm aware of the whole passer =/= pass in the context of exams thing, heh. But thank you anyway :3)


Yeah, after I made the post I thought 'dang what if his teachers were all girls' but didn't bother going back to change it :( though there was a tiny mistake there as well since you used the singular form 'française' instead of the plural 'françaises'.
I'm not sure what I was thinking while typing the second one but I'm pretty sure I didn't notice 'accent' because yeah 'accent' is definitely 'français', but what you do is write 'accent/prononciation français(e)'. There might be a rule about what you explained but I am shamefully ignorant of any technical grammar terms (in any language, sobbu) and this is what I learnt in class. Our teacher was Belgian though so maybe she's UNTRUSTWORTHY. hisss


Dannichu said:


> Mon francais ce n'est pas bon. Je voudrais continue learning dans some point, mais je suis tres poor et n'afford lessons pas. Sur le other main, it would probablement be pour le best if je just gave it up as a cause perdu.


:3c

Zuu: Yeah, it probably would be easier to pick up than Russian and tbh both are roughly as useful. I was planning on learning German in the future but if I get Swedish instead that is also acceptable, but I'm still thinking about it. Thank you for the offer/tip though, I'll certainly consider it!


----------



## Tailsy

Eon Spirit said:


> No I'm not.


Are too. Don't lie to your fellow Scot.


----------



## Tarvos

VPLJ, tu peux m'aider avec apprendre de parler francais mieux? Idealement j'appris de parler et ecouter mieux parce que ces sont les parts de francais qui me donne les plus problemes (grammar fail?). Ma grammaire n'est pas parfait, mais soit, je comprends les regles dans un niveau elementaire. 

Ma copine m'a dit que je prononce les voyelles trop "fermé", un peu comme les neerlandais prononcent ses voyelles. Et plus il y a un chance je vais habiter a Belqiue dans le futur. Je ne sais pas quand/ou, mais je veux obtenir une stage (pour mes etudes) qui est en Belgique. C'est aussi parce que j'habiterai plus pres que ma copine.

(Elle parle anglais, mais je vais a Bruxelles souvent et les gens parlent tres mauvais neerlandais la bas).

Aussi, mes fautes sont souvent cause par traductions literale de neerlandais. :(


----------



## H-land

... said:


> Phantom said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> No *escribo* el español muy bien. Pero lo hablo muy bien. Lo *uso* todo el tiempo en mi trabajo. Pero estoy un fallo *(???)* con la gramática y el deletreo. Utilizo mucho argot.
Click to expand...

Judging by context, I'd say we're looking for a synonym for "fracaso". 
...Actually, Google Translate says that's exactly what it is. Dunno the etymology, though; have to ask Phantom who he picked the word up from and where they're from (since my Mexican classmate in high school was from southern Mexico and only used fracaso). Fallar apparently means "to fail" in Spanish and Catalan, but...


Yeah. Since my last post in here was so long ago, updates:
English (Fluent, native. American, north midlands.)
Spanish (10.5 semesters)
French (2 semesters)
German (1 semester on pronunciation)
Italian (Less than one semester-equivalent)

Spent a total of about a week and a half in France, a week in Spain (Barcelona to Madrid), a week or so in Italy (Venice, Florence, Pisa, Rome), a week in Germany (Berlin), and less than a day in Mexico (Cozumel). Still need more practice.

Planning to visit Peru next spring on a study abroad trip. Hopefully I'll be fluent bu the end of it. If not, I'll just be going crazy about the food when I go home, either missing Peruvian food or binging on the American food you can't get in Peru. Also planning a trip this summer with the family to Germany in some parts. Not quite sure where yet, but I do think it'll be nice to see Germany where there's leaves on the trees.

Still'd like to learn some Russian, Arabic, maybe some flavor of Indian, some form of Chinese and Japanese. I've also decided that I'd like to pick up a Cajun accent for my French, and an Austrian accent for my German, just because Cajun French sounds wacky, and Austrian German seems to produced some of the most famous German voices of the modern era.


----------



## Tarvos

I've spoken Dutch and English since forever and by semester do you mean half a year? Cos in that case I have 8 for both French and German and spent countless time in Belgium


----------



## Vladimir Putin's LJ

My problem is that I've actually never had to consciously learn a language, so it's kind of a pain in the ass to have to learn to learn ;__; my mother is Portuguese and my dad is Dutch so I always spoke those, I picked up French naturally since I live in Brussels and I somehow just figured out English by listening to my parents speak to each other (and freaked out my mother in the process by suddenly answering the phone in English).
I'M BAD AT PATIENCE >:c



Tarvos said:


> VPLJ, tu peux m'aider avec apprendre de parler francais mieux? Idealement j'appris de parler et ecouter mieux parce que ces sont les parts de francais qui me donne les plus problemes (grammar fail?). Ma grammaire n'est pas parfait, mais soit, je comprends les regles dans un niveau elementaire.
> 
> Ma copine m'a dit que je prononce les voyelles trop "fermé", un peu comme les neerlandais prononcent ses voyelles. Et plus il y a un chance je vais habiter a Belqiue dans le futur. Je ne sais pas quand/ou, mais je veux obtenir une stage (pour mes etudes) qui est en Belgique. C'est aussi parce que j'habiterai plus pres que ma copine.
> 
> (Elle parle anglais, mais je vais a Bruxelles souvent et les gens parlent tres mauvais neerlandais la bas).
> 
> Aussi, mes fautes sont souvent cause par traductions literale de neerlandais. :(


Bien sur, je serais ravi de pouvoir t'aider! Je suis d'accord avec toi en ce qui concerne l'aptitude des Bruxellois à parler neerlandais -- il n'y a que 2 personnes sur 10 qui y parviennent... même si Bruxelles est en pleine region Flamande. M'enfin.

En passant, désolé si je fais plein d'erreurs en ecrivant :( je lis beaucoup de BD en français mais je ne parviens à écrire que moyenement. Veux-tu que je corrige ton post?

Do you understand alright when people speak French? My stepdad (who is also Dutch) is learning Portuguese and while he can pretty much understand any slow Portuguese convo and read newspapers and so on, he's lacking in the answering dept.


----------



## H-land

Tarvos said:


> I've spoken Dutch and English since forever and by semester do you mean half a year? Cos in that case I have 8 for both French and German and spent countless time in Belgium


In this case, I mean half a year (or a course equivalent to such) in an educational setting, so yes.


----------



## Tarvos

> En passant, désolé si je fais plein d'erreurs en ecrivant :( je lis beaucoup de BD en français mais je ne parviens à écrire que moyenement. Veux-tu que je corrige ton post?


D'accord, merci :)



> Do you understand alright when people speak French? My stepdad (who is also Dutch) is learning Portuguese and while he can pretty much understand any slow Portuguese convo and read newspapers and so on, he's lacking in the answering dept.


If it's spoken particularly slowly, yes. I can indeed understand most written French. I can also speak it if you give me time to formulate answers (if it's easy enough I come up with something after a few minutes and then once I get going it's a bit easier for me to do it). I need to take a while to formulate things properly (or semi properly) in French. My problem is most French is spoken so fast that I miss out on half the words, especially because a lot of them sound similar due to assimilation and dropping letters.


----------



## Shiny Grimer

Zecora said:


> Judging by context, I'd say we're looking for a synonym for "fracaso".
> ...Actually, Google Translate says that's exactly what it is. Dunno the etymology, though; have to ask Phantom who he picked the word up from and where they're from (since my Mexican classmate in high school was from southern Mexico and only used fracaso). Fallar apparently means "to fail" in Spanish and Catalan, but...


It sounded like he was trying to say "I am a failure at grammar and orthography."  In the context he was using it it sounded really strange, though.

Comme tout le monde parle français dans se topic, je parlerai français aussi ! Je n'ai pas étudié le français en beaucoup de temps, mais je peux le lire très bien. Puis, je peux pas l'écouter bien. Je le parle avec un accent acceptable.

J'ai étudié le français pour cinq ans. Cet année, c'est le premier an que je n'ai pas étudié la français dans l'école. Je devrais lire plus en français, mais je devrais faire beaucoup des chose. Je n'ai pas fini de lire "Harry Potter" en russe. J'ai lu ce livre pour un an. Je peux lire "Candide" mais je n'aime pas ces livre. Vraiment, j'ai beaucoup des livres en français mais je n'ai pas des temps pour lire.


----------



## Clover

... said:


> Correcting people's Spanish because this is my life, yo.
> 
> So my language learning wish list is something like:
> 1. Russian (I am slowly getting there)
> 2. Swedish (this language is suspiciously like English, have not started serious study)
> 3. Hindi (I have a friend who speaks Hindi and he teaches me things like "mai khel hargayi" and "Billi maize pe hai" and I can say "mai daktar nahi hu" so yeah)
> 4. Finnish (because it's the prettiest language and it has 14 cases and I like a _challenge_)
> 5. Icelandic (because of its similarity to Old English and because it sounds nice and after studying Russian, 4 cases is easy)
> 6. Yoruba (yeah getting into my weird languages here, this is because my dialect of Spanish has some Yoruba influence and there were lots of Yoruba who were brought to Cuba and Nigeria is pretty cool and also TONAL LANGUAGES)
> 7. Navajo (wtf is wrong with me, but yeah I want to learn a Native language and Navajo is the one with most speakers)
> 8. Arabic (I once had a dream that I could learn Arabic and then I saw the grammar and I was like D:)
> 9. Japanese (I will never get to this but I would LOVE to learn Japanese :[ Japan is so fascinating and I would get to read awesome postmodern Japanese literature and play video games and sing Japanese music and yeah)
> 
> I like learning languages that are very different from another. This is why I don't intend to learn any more Romance languages: it would be too easy. Ideally I would have a really wide base of languages as opposed to going deep into one branch, but that would be super difficult and require a lot of time. So yeah.


Hooraaay language lovers! :D I want to learn ~all the languages~... except for a bunch you listed, cause those are weird. :(

My list would probably go...

Portuguese (totally conversational in this, I think, but I want to figure out why little kids are like "<... I have no idea what you just said>" when I try to talk with them D: I think I might just have a thick American accent, which is a rather alien concept when my brain defaults to 'American = unaccented'.)

Japanese (I am so rusty, sobsob. I can read it still! [hooray ace attorney investigations two :D] but trying to form anything but the most basic of sentences makes my brain yell "lol, no, you're in Portuguese-mode rn, get back to the states and then we'll talk" so I come up with things like "você wa muito genki hoje desu ne." that hurts in my soul.)

Esperanto (I've been interested in this for a few years, but haven't done more than the most basic scanning of lernu... Portuguese is kind of like a natlang Esperanto, I've found! Given how similar it is to Spanish and Italian and French and such.)

... spanish, italian, and french and such! I can see why you might want to aim for less similar languages for the challenge, but these are so popular... and I mainly want to learn other languages to speak with other people, you know! so. After that I guess the UN languages, you know, chinese and arabic with probably korean mixed in there somewhere.

Languages rule!! >w<


----------



## Phantom

Zecora said:


> Judging by context, I'd say we're looking for a synonym for "fracaso".
> ...Actually, Google Translate says that's exactly what it is. Dunno the etymology, though; have to ask Phantom who he picked the word up from and where they're from (since my Mexican classmate in high school was from southern Mexico and only used fracaso). Fallar apparently means "to fail" in Spanish and Catalan, but...


It's more of a slang term. Like saying "Por fa" instead of "por favor". I don't know about southern Mexico, but in the school I was staying at used that. Might have even been a school meme. But I learned a lot of slang and phrases that they don't teach in a classroom... and phrases that I dare not repeat. (lol)

One phrase I came back and taught my classmates here was "por fa" and "aguas", which is a quick way of saying "look out" or "duck"


I am a she by the way.


----------



## Shiny Grimer

Ah, that makes sense. I speak the Cuban variety of Spanish and have no contact whatsoever with Mexican Spanish, which is why it hit me as a "wtf."


----------



## Lord of the Fireflies

Skroy said:


> Salut! Quelles langues est-ce que vous vous parlez et/ou écrivez?
> 
> Je suis *fluide* en anglais évidemment, mais *je confond parfois* les definitions des mots particuli*ers*. Je *sais* comment parler et écrire en français aussi, mais ce n'est pas assez. En fait, j'ai encore de *la* difficulté à communiquer en français oralement, alors que mes capacités en écriture et lecture sont assez décent*e*s (mais ils ont encore besoin *de* beaucoup d'amélioration).
> 
> ...Ugh, that translation definitely needs a lot of work...)


Not bad, as French is a REALLY hard language to learn when its not native (like me). Féminin/Masculin fucks over any english-speaking guy, and i see youre not too bad at that either. The formulation of sentences needs work though.


----------



## Zeph

As a project that will count towards my UCAS form (To non-UKians, pretty much a form that you submit to universities here to apply to them) as the equivalent of a whole extra AS-level (I think?), we've been given the opportunity to write a 5000-word essay or article relevant to our university subject. Since I want to do French at uni, I'm considering doing a translation of a piece of literature or a screenplay or something. Problem is, I've no idea what; pretty much anything considerable as a 'classic' will already have one, if not several, professional translations published, so it wouldn't be as, erm, original. Anybody have any ideas of anything relatively well-known that's originally written in English that doesn't have a (published) French translation? Also, when I get round to it, should I post progress here, would anybody be particularly interested in seeing it?


----------



## I liek Squirtles

My native language is Spanish and my second language is English. I'm eleven. Can't blame me.>.<

Translate this. Pretty basic Spanish, if you ask me.

En una arboleda, vivía un mono. Le enseñaba el dedo malo a todo el que pasaba.


----------



## Shiny Grimer

Another native Spanish speaker? o: De donde vienes?


----------



## H-land

Cosmic Blueberry said:


> Not bad, as French is a REALLY hard language to learn when its not native (like me). Féminin/Masculin fucks over any english-speaking guy, and i see youre not too bad at that either. The formulation of sentences needs work though.


It's not _that_ hard to deal with gendered nouns.
You've got that in Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, German, Polish, Russian, and just about any other Indo-European language you could think of, too.
What's harder, anyway, is Tu/Vouz.
It's one thing to learn every new noun with an article, but honestly, what's so hard about remembering "une fenêtre" instead of just "fenêtre"? What's hard is remembering to use different pronouns and conjugations to address your sister and your mother, or your classmate and your teacher.
Notwithstanding the issues of teachers who let (or encourage) you to call them by their first names.


----------



## Zeph

Zecora said:


> It's not _that_ hard to deal with gendered nouns.
> You've got that in Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, German, Polish, Russian, and just about any other Indo-European language you could think of, too.
> What's harder, anyway, is Tu/Vouz.
> It's one thing to learn every new noun with an article, but honestly, what's so hard about remembering "une fenêtre" instead of just "fenêtre"? What's hard is remembering to use different pronouns and conjugations to address your sister and your mother, or your classmate and your teacher.
> Notwithstanding the issues of teachers who let (or encourage) you to call them by their first names.


Tu/Vous (with an S, not a Z!) Isn't really that difficult either... If it's someone you are obliged to respect or is significantly older than you, you use vous. If it's someone your age, or a family member, you use tu. Of course there are some exceptions, but that depends on the person and their preference for how they'd like to be addressed, really.

Although I agree with you in that genders aren't that difficult... There are actually some rather easy ways of remembering! Of course, there's always exceptions to the rules, but once you know them, it's difficult to forget them.


----------



## surskitty

I think a lot of people would have easier times with t/v forms if they remember that English has politeness levels, too.  :|b Just go with the v form unless you'd be casual with that person for some reason.


----------



## H-land

Zephyrous Castform said:


> Tu/Vous (with an S, not a Z!) Isn't really that difficult either... If it's someone you are obliged to respect or is significantly older than you, you use vous. If it's someone your age, or a family member, you use tu. Of course there are some exceptions, but that depends on the person and their preference for how they'd like to be addressed, really.


I didn't meant that it was hard to understand. I'm quite familiar with the concept.
It's the implementation and integration that's the hard part!
(Doesn't help that we're usually taught the tu form first and more encourage to exercise it.)


----------



## Zeph

I guess that's a good point - occasionally (in fact, more often than not!), people from my French class use tu with the teachers and don't even realise that they've done so unless the teacher says "Non, vouvoie-moi s'il t'plait" or something.

Also surskitty (You ARE surskitty right, enekoiru? I can't check past usernames on my phone) has a good point - I suppose it could be said that if you'd watch your language any significant amount in English while talking to someone, you'd use vous for them in French (or indeed the polite second person in any language).


----------



## surskitty

Zephyrous Castform said:


> Also surskitty (You ARE surskitty right, enekoiru? I can't check past usernames on my phone) has a good point - I suppose it could be said that if you'd watch your language any significant amount in English while talking to someone, you'd use vous for them in French (or indeed the polite second person in any language).


Yeah.

The real trick, though, is actually noting what politeness level you're using in a language you're fluent in.  So maybe that's easier said than done.  But it's still ... English isn't significantly easier because it's lost its t form.  It's just slightly less obvious because you can't really point out one thing as "this!  this is how to see I am being (in)formal!"


----------



## Tarvos

Cosmic Blueberry said:


> Not bad, as French is a REALLY hard language to learn when its not native (like me). Féminin/Masculin fucks over any english-speaking guy, and i see youre not too bad at that either. The formulation of sentences needs work though.


Feminine/masculine is easy to learn if you, like most people, don't have English as your first language. Most languages have preserved grammatical gender. It's just English that doesn't.


----------



## surskitty

Eh, I think it's easy even if you do have english as your first language.  It's if you're used to languages without articles or much in the way of count nouns that it gets tricky.


----------



## Tarvos

Yeah but gender can affect the words without them having articles (cf. Latin)


----------



## shy ♡

Personally gendered nouns aren't hard to learn, it's just a pain in the ass to use because it's completely unnecessary. It makes it impossible to form sentences without addressing someone/thing in terms of gender, which drives me up the wall. And you can't refer to someone as an 'it', and there's no differentiation between gender and sex - at least not in Hebrew. :|


----------



## I liek Squirtles

... said:


> Another native Spanish speaker? o: De donde vienes?


Puerto Rico.


----------



## Zhorken

HELLO I like French.

Je suis assez fluide en français pour, euh, jouer aux jeux vidéo en français?  J'ai aussi regardé Persepolis en français il y a quelque temps sans trop devoir regarder aux sous-titres (et c'étaient des sous-titres français!  J'avais seulement des problèmes à comprendre le français trop vite parlé), mais rien depuis.  J'essaie de trouver des choses comme ça parfois pour garder mon français et peut-être même l'améliorer, mais j'ai moins souvent l'occasion de le parler ou de l'écrire, malheureusement.  Mais je crois que j'en fais assez bien?  Je me trompe parfois du sexe d'un nom, mais c'est d'habitude un nom que j'ai appris il y a longtemps; j'ai plus ou moins l'idée maintenant de mémoriser le sexe comme je mémorise l'orthographe.  Et le vouvoiement m'est venu assez naturellement dès le début, mais il me semblait toujours que personne d'autre dans mes classes n'essayait d'en faire.

DE TOUTE FACON je ne sais pas trop quoi dire; c'était vraiment juste un exercice pour voir si je pouvais écrire un bon paragraphe en français. /o/  Quelqu'un pourrait m'en donner des commentaires...?


----------



## Shiny Grimer

> except russian - wtf is going on there


Russian has the easiest gender system of any language I've studied. O_o Mostly because you don't need to remember anything - the ending itself tells you what the gender is. Just remember the few irregular ones like время and you're good to go. Declension in Russian isn't a big deal either - the only one that caused me any pain was the genitive plural.

And just for fun, declensions in Russian:

Nominative - Accusative - Prepositional - Dative - Genitive - Instrumental
стол - стол - столе - столу - стола - столом
книга - книгу - книге - книге - книги - книгой
письмо - письмо - письме - письму - письма - письмом

столы - столы - столах - столам - столов - столами
книги - книги - книгах - книгам - книг - книгами
письма - письма - письмах - письмам - писем - письмами

Besides the genitive plural, Russian declensions are really easy to make.


----------



## 1. Luftballon

oi, chinese has a much easier gender system. mostly because it doesn't exist.

actually, it doesn't have lots of things. it doesn't even have grammatical number!

I mean, really, who needs all this stuff which only serves to confuse people! silly westerners.


----------



## ignore_this_acct

I'm not using accent marks because I'm lazy.

Hola, me llamo Silvia (Tengo silvia hoy llamo de espanol).  Me gusta la dibujo y desconso.  

How I have an A in the class, I don't know...


----------



## Lorem Ipsum

... said:


> -snip-


silly me, I meant russian adjectives, which unlike other languages, bear next to no resemblance to their nouns, unless again I'm much mistaken and my russian is too rusty to bear notice to


----------



## Shiny Grimer

Russian adjectival declensions are slightly more of a pain in the ass, but after seeing them so many times I've gotten used to them.



> oi, chinese has a much easier gender system. mostly because it doesn't exist.
> 
> actually, it doesn't have lots of things. it doesn't even have grammatical number!
> 
> I mean, really, who needs all this stuff which only serves to confuse people! silly westerners.


Isolating languages ftw.
Though are there purely isolating languages with gender?


----------



## Music Dragon

Chinese is ridiculous in other ways. Take words like 身体, for example. You can't simply say "body" when you mean "body"; no, you have to call it a "body-body", because if you just say "body" it could be misinterpreted as "arsenic" or something. Granted, there's usually a context, but you know what I mean. What Chinese lacks in complexity it makes up for in ambiguity.

And don't get me started on the writing...


----------



## Dialga Of Time

I am very good at speaking English, a bit good at French, and fairly good at speaking Arabic. :)


----------



## Lili

I'm trying out for French next year in school.  And I'm fairly good at basic Spanish.


----------



## Mandibuzz

Ich spreche ein bisschen Deustch, and that's as far as my foreign language skills go (I don't count my tourist-grade French).


----------



## MentheLapin

English, a fair bit of Spanish and German and I'm fluent in Klingon. I'm taking Spanish and German further, and would like to end up teaching them in later life. I'm also interested in taking a Japanese GCSE somehow.


----------



## Lorem Ipsum

I wasn't aware that there was such thing as a Japanese GCSE!


----------



## Dannichu

Oh my god. I remember the French oral like it was yesterday. O.O
I remember picking, for reasons unknown even to myself, the topic of health to talk about, and I basically said that everything was "bon pour ma coer".


----------



## Tarvos

If you said that, I can't imagine them liking it, hah... as it's coeur...

(not to be nasty, as I suck at French, but it just made me laugh)


----------



## Zeph

I'M NOT NATIVE SPEAKING but regardless I'd like to try to help you anyway. If I make any mistakes, I assume someone better than I will correct mine.



Lorem Ipsum said:


> Help needed! Basically I have a French speaking exam for my GCSE on Tuesday and I want full marks. I will upload a pronunciation video tomorrow, but for now, if a native speaker could look over the written version and root out syntactical or grammatical errors, I would be really, really grateful!
> 
> *What is your favourite sort of holiday?*
> 
> Mes vacances préferées sont quand je va*i*s au quelque pays où il fait beau tous les jours. Bien que je sois un garçon qui admire le temps quand il pleut, je préfère le soileil et je pré*f*ère *pouvoir* me bronzer sur la plage ou nager dans la mer.
> 
> *Do you think that holidays are important?*
> 
> Oui, je pense que les vancances sont très importantes car elles sont une bonne opportunité de se *détendre* et s'amuser. Pour cette raison je ne pense pas que les vacances d'entreprise soyent ɲ*aussi* bonnes que les vacances régulières car elles ne sont pas assez *reposantes*. Cependant, j'aime qu'on puisse prendre un avion au quelque pays et que ça ne coute *pas*cher.
> 
> *Describe your last holiday*
> 
> Pour mes vacances dernières, je suis allé en Italie avec mes amis et avec mon école pour visiter les ruines romaines parmi autres choses. J'*ai eu* le temps le plus bien *de* ma vie entière car mes amis étaient cool et les ruines étaient très interessantes. Le temps *était* très *[Although it would be generaly better to just say "Il faisait tres beau" really]* bon aussi - il n'a pas *plu*. Quand j'étais là, j'ai pris beaucoup de nourriture itallienne comme des pâ*t*es et de la pizza authentique. C'était fantastique!
> 
> *Are you going to return?*
> 
> Si je peux rétourner, bien sur, je retournerai. J'adore l'Italie et la nourriture italienne et les gens italie*n*s. En fait, cet*te* école va organiser un autre voyage à Sicilie pour mars *[Shouldn't be any preposition here, so no 'dans']* l'année prochaine. Je vais demander à mes parents pour *voir* si je peux y aller, et plus de mes amis vont y aller après *que*je les *aie [subjunctive! But pronounced the same]* *parlé du* voyage en Italie *cette* fois. Si j'y irai, ça sera éxcéllent!


----------



## Vladimir Putin's LJ

Castform did a good work, and he deserves some holidays.

I'll just throw out some more general criticisms and such.



Zephyrous Castform said:


> What is your favourite sort of holiday?
> 
> Mes vacances préferées sont quand je vais au quelque pays où il fait beau tous les jours. Bien que je sois un garçon qui admire le temps quand il pleut, je préfère le soleil et je préfère pouvoir me bronzer sur la plage ou nager dans la mer.


You don't really say 'au quelques pays' like that, translated literally it'd sound something like 'my favourite holidays are when I go to those few countries'. Unless that was what you were going for, it would be much more natural to say something like 'Ma destination de vacances (there might be a typo there but the idea is that if you say 'mes vacances préferées' it sounds like you're talking about the memory of a specific vacation you had, not a general favourite sort) préferée serait un pays ou il fait beau tout les jours'.



> Do you think that holidays are important?
> 
> Oui, je pense que les vacances sont très importantes car elles sont une bonne opportunité de se détendre et s'amuser. Pour cette raison je ne pense pas que les vacances d'entreprise soyent aussi bonnes que les vacances régulières car elles ne sont pas assez reposantes. Cependant, j'aime qu'on puisse prendre un avion au quelque pays et que ça ne coute pas cher.


This is pretty good, but 'vacances régulieres' sounds very off. 'Régulieres' is kind of a rare word in general and it doesn't make much sense in this context. 'Ordinaires' would be better.
The latter part of the last sentence doesn't make very much sense, specifically the 'j'aime qu'on puisse prendre un avion *au quelque pays*'. This would mean something like 'I like that it is possible to go on those country-flavoured airplanes', though it's very hard to translate the 'au' because it shouldn't be there. 'J'aime qu'on puisse prendre un avion à destination de nombreux pays' is better if you mean that you can go on plane to many countries.



> Describe your last holiday
> 
> Pour mes vacances dernières, je suis allé en Italie avec mes amis et avec mon école pour visiter les ruines romaines, parmi autres choses. J'ai eu le temps le plus bien de ma vie entière car mes amis étaient cool et les ruines étaient très interessantes. Le temps était très [Although it would be generaly better to just say "Il faisait tres beau" really] bon aussi - il n'a pas plu. Quand j'étais là, j'ai pris beaucoup de nourriture itallienne comme des pâtes et de la pizza authentique. C'était fantastique!


'Pour mes dernières vacances' is the correct way, even though it still sounds pretty stiff but I'm having a brain freeze at the moment.
It's useful to keep in mind that normal English expressions can sound really weird when translated, and 'j'ai eu le temps le plus bien de ma vie entiére' is understandable but wrong. 'J'ai passé le meilleur moment de toute ma vie' would be the more natural way.
The rest is fine but 'j'ai pris beaucoup de nourriture' is a little bit dodgy because in this context, you would read 'pris' as in literally 'took', like you just grabbed the food and made a dash for it. A simple 'J'ai mangé' or 'j'ai gouté' works fine.



> Are you going to return?
> 
> Si je peux rétourner, bien sur, je retournerai. J'adore l'Italie et la nourriture italienne et les gens italiens. En fait, mon école va organiser un autre voyage à Sicilie pour mars [Shouldn't be any preposition here, so no 'dans'] l'année prochaine. Je vais demander à mes parents pour voir si je peux y aller, et plus de mes amis vont y aller après queje les aie [subjunctive! But pronounced the same] parlé du voyage en Italie cette fois. Si j'y irai, ça sera éxcéllent!


'en mars' sounds better instead of 'pour mars', because that's "in March' instead of 'for March' (respectively). 'Je vais demander a mes parents pour voir si je peux y aller' is completely fine but a bit long-winded, so unless you're aiming for a specific wordcount 'Je vais demander a mes parents si je peux y aller' is less formal.
After that, do you mean that more friends are coming after you talked to them about the last trip? If so, the sentence reads better if it's 'et plus (remember to read 'pluSS' and not 'plu' because the latter means none and would be incorrect in context anyway :( ) de mes amis ont voulu y aller après que je leur aie parlé du voyage en Italie la fois derniére'. If the sentence is more along the lines that more friends will want to go if you tell them about the next trip, it's 'et plus de mes amis vont vouloir y aller après que je leur parle du prochain voyage', though that's slightly informal.

YEAH sorry for typos i am hurrying


----------



## Lorem Ipsum

Thank you so much <3

I got 28/30 - my accent let me down by one mark and my "range of vocabulary" as well because I used the same phrase twice in a paragraph. Meh. It still means that I've got 116/120 overall on the coursework element, with only the 40% for the reading and listening to go at the sat exam in June. :D


----------



## Zeph

Excellent, well done! That's a very good grade, and I imagine you'll find the papers quite easy, since you're obviously pretty good, and they're not all that difficult anyway. Bravo, mon cher!


----------



## MentheLapin

Lorem Ipsum said:


> I wasn't aware that there was such thing as a Japanese GCSE!


Apparently so. The girls' school counterpart to our all-males school does it. Ours offers Mandarin Chinese instead. And well done on your French oral!


----------



## Lorem Ipsum

Yoshiya Kiryu said:


> Apparently so. The girls' school counterpart to our all-males school does it. Ours offers Mandarin Chinese instead. And well done on your French oral!


Well I never knew that! My conglomerate of schools offers French, Spanish, German, Italian and Mandarin, but I suppose that's quite a sheltered variety. And thanks!


----------



## Zeph

I've came across quite a dilemma while thinking about universities.

I will definitely study French, but as an aside, I'd like to take an _ab initio_ course in a new language. The ones I've narrowed it down to are Italian, Swedish/Icelandic, Ancient Greek, Modern Greek or just Linguistics. I'm not really going for utility, more just... Interest, since languages are just.. My favourite things.

I'm a bit concerned Italian may be too similar to French, but it does appear to be a really beautiful language, and... Yeah. Swedish because I've always loved the sound and feel of the Scandinavian languages, and Swedish seems to be the nicest, and Icelandic the most... Well, for (huge) want of a better word, the most 'cool'. Greek because I once taught myself a little bit and have since forgotten most of it, but it'd be nice to pick it up again; also it just has this nice sort of archaeic feel about it. As for Linguistics, well, you know. It's interesting!

Any input as to which language would be most interesting would be appreciated...!


----------



## Shiny Grimer

I, personally, wouldn't take Italian because it's too similar to French and I've sort of had it with Romance languages. I'm studying Swedish now. Icelandic is also cool but harder and you'll probably get less use for it. If you learn Swedish you'll also be able to understand Danish and Norwegian pretty well (or at least it'll be easier to learn them). If you're interested in Old English, Icelandic could come in helpful as it's kind of similar.

I would actually like you to learn Greek because I remember you once tried teaching yourself Greek and that was really cool and most people don't bother learning Greek. :c

If you like languages, then it might be worth taking linguistics - it's is very interesting, to me at least.


----------



## Music Dragon

The main advantage of studying Swedish is that it makes Magicka worthwhile.


----------



## Zeph

Music Dragon said:


> The main advantage of studying Swedish is that it makes Magicka worthwhile.


Magicka refuses to even run on my computer!


----------



## Music Dragon

Yeah, it's a... pretty broken game.


----------



## Zeph

(At fear of going off-topic,) How so?

Also how exciting! Cambridge offers a course of two major languages with a more minorly-focused-upon one, two of which can be _ab initio_. French and _ai_ Italian with _ai_ Greek, I'm thinking? However it's highly unlikely I'd have the capability (or, more to the point, funds) to get into Cambridge. Sadly.


----------



## Music Dragon

Well it's full of bugs. Admittedly it's better now, they've been patching it a lot. Single player works pretty well, but multiplayer's still got plenty of annoying crashes and stuff. Still, if you speak Swedish, it's worth it just for the fake language they speak. It's absolutely hilarious.


----------



## Zeph

Ah yes - I'd noticed that in the playthrough I watched; does it actually say anything real at all or is it entirely nonsense?


----------



## Music Dragon

Half of it is butchered Swedish, the other half is gibberish. Very often they say things you can actually understand. (The best line by far is "Vid Balders balle, ett skogsjäder!")


----------



## Zeph

..."By Balder's dick, a forest [Something]"?


----------



## Music Dragon

Yes. I think the humour is lost in translation. Hurr.


----------



## Zuu

i know this is hypocritical since English is very guilty of this, but the flexibility of Swedish's prepositions confounds me.


----------



## Pokephile Girl

Wow, some of you people are really studying some interesting languages.

In my case, I can speak a perfect Spanish and perfect Catalan, plus a quite good English. I can understand French more or less, and I studied a little bit of Japanese, so I can translate texts with a dictionary since I know the grammar.

Unluckily, sometimes using a foreign language plays dirty tricks on you, because you are wanting to translate something into -for example- English and then you find out you used some false friends that made your sentence become stupid xD
Furthermore, Spanish (from Spain) is a language full of proverbs and set phrases, and they're actually pretty hard to translate to be correctly understood. Not to mention the presence of the typical Spanish sarcasm!


----------



## Music Dragon

You're doing fairly well considering you're not taking classes or anything, Zuu. (Or are you?)

Swedish is a language with CP-V2 word order; you're going to have to change the word order in several of your sentences and I'm not going to do a good job of explaining why. After all, I'm not a Swedish teacher; I just happen to speak the language. Very often, you don't stop to think about how your native language works, since it all comes naturally, so I can't always give you proper explanations as to why things are the way they are, but I'll do my best.



Zuu said:


> Spanska är ett skitig språk.


As you seem to be aware, _språk_ is a neuter noun (_ett språk_ rather than _en språk_), so _skitig_ should be _skitigt_:

_Spanska är ett skitigt språk._

However, the word _skitig/skitigt_ does not have quite the same meaning as "shitty"; it rather means that something is grimy or dirty. So I suggest using a different adjective.



Zuu said:


> ni skulle studer Svenska!


Firstly, there is no such thing as _studer_; what you're looking for is _studera_. (Maybe that was just a typo.)

Secondly, _skulle_ means _would_, but I assume what you mean is "you should study Swedish", not "you would study Swedish". Replace _skulle_ with _borde_ (which means "should").

Lastly, _Svenska_ should be _svenska_, without the capital S. We Swedes don't capitalize languages/nationalities. We also don't capitalize days/months. "Monday" is _måndag_, "January" is _januari_, "Englishman" is _engelsman_ etc. This holds true for many more languages than just Swedish, actually.

_Ni borde studera svenska!_



Zuu said:


> är ett riktigt bra och intressant språk,


There's no subject in this sentence; it just reads "is a really good and interesting language". You need to put a (pro)noun, presumably either _det_ or _svenska_, before _är_, so it becomes "It is a really good and interesting language" or "Swedish is a really good and interesting language":

_Det är ett riktigt bra och intressant språk. (Svenska är ett riktigt bra och intressant språk.)_



Zuu said:


> mer intressant än Spanska jag tror!


Apart from the capital S, you've made two tiny errors that are going to require lengthy explanations...

Firstly, you shouldn't be using the verb _tror_ here. See, the English verb "to think" has three counterparts in the Swedish language, depending on what you mean by it:

_Att tänka_ means "to think" as in "to use your brain, to have thoughts". Example: _Jag tänker på dig hela tiden_ means "I think about you all the time".

_Att tro_ means "to think" as in "to believe something is the case but not be entirely sure". Example: _Jag tror att det kommer regna imorgon_ means "I think it's going to rain tomorrow".

_Att tycka_ means "to think" as in "to be of the opinion". Example: _Jag tycker att han är tråkig_ means "I think he's boring".

In your sentence, you'll want to replace _tror_ with _tycker_, because you're expressing an opinion, not an uncertain belief. Or so I assume.

So that leaves us with this:

_Mer intressant än spanska, jag tycker!_

Unfortunately, there's still something wrong with this sentence; namely, _jag tycker_ should be _tycker jag_. In English, you can just tack "I think" onto the end of a sentence; you go from the usual "I think [something]" to "[something], I think" (in other words, from subject-verb-object to object-subject-verb). In Swedish, however, we go from "I think [something]" to "[something] think I" (in other words, from subject-verb-object to object-verb-subject).

So the standard word order is _Jag tycker (att) det är mer intressant än spanska_ ("I think (that) it is more interesting than Spanish"), and then when you reverse the word order, you get _Det är mer intressant än spanska, tycker jag_ ("It is more interesting than Spanish, I think").

So the proper sentence is:

_Mer intressant än spanska, tycker jag!_

This goes for most similar constructions. If you want sentences along the lines of "[something], I think" or "[something], they said" or "[something], he wrote", remember that the order is object-verb-subject in Swedish (_[something], tror jag_ or _[something], sade de_ or_ [something], skrev han_). Example: "Murder, she wrote" becomes _Mord, skrev hon_.



Zuu said:


> alla skulle studer Svenska. _alla_.


Same errors as above, with _Ni borde studera svenska_. The correct sentence is:

_Alla borde studera svenska._



Zuu said:


> lol va
> 
> svenska är inte användbar????


Firstly, _användbar_ should be _användbart_. While _svenska_ isn't a neuter noun, it is an uncountable noun (you can't say "a Swedish, many Swedish" when referring to the language, right?). Uncountable nouns always use the neuter form of the adjective - hence _användbart_ instead of _användbar_.

Secondly, when you turn a statement into a question, you usually have to reverse the word order. _Svenska är inte användbart_ is a statement, while _Är inte svenska användbart?_ or _Är svenska inte användbart?_ is a question.

In this case, you're quoting something that someone else said, so keeping the original word order intact is possible. But it'd sound extremely awkward, so I wouldn't recommend it unless you absolutely have to repeat someone's exact words.

The correct sentence is:

_Är svenska inte användbart? / Är inte svenska användbart?_



Zuu said:


> också lol


_Också_ doesn't work quite the same way "also" does. If you say "also lol, [something]", it's kinda like you're saying "and by the way, lol, [something]". But the Swedish word _också_ can only be used in the sense "this is x and that is also x". So it's really more like the word "too", as in "this is x and that is x too".

For example, you can use _också_ if you want to say "He's stupid and she's stupid too" (_Han är dum och hon är också dum_), or "Red is my favourite colour, but blue is also nice" (_Rött är min favoritfärg, men blått är också trevligt_).

In your sentence, I think it would be most appropriate to simply say "and lol" instead (_och lol_).



Zuu said:


> jag haft missförstod vad du sade


_Haft_ is the supine form of _att ha_, "to have". You can't use _haft_ here, because, well, it doesn't make any sense. You're using _att ha_ as an auxiliary verb attached to _missförstod_, but as an auxiliary verb, _att ha_ can only occur in the present tense and the past tense (forming the perfect and the pluperfect, respectively).

This may sound confusing, but it's exactly the same thing in English. You can say "I have misunderstood" (the perfect, formed by using the present tense of the auxiliary verb "to have") or "I had misunderstood" (the pluperfect, formed by using the past tense of "to have"), but you can't say "I have had misunderstood". Your sentence currently reads something along the lines of "I have had misunderstood what you said".

_Jag har missförstått_ = "I have misunderstood".
_Jag hade missförstått_ = "I had misunderstood".
_Jag haft missförstod_ = "I have had misunderstood"?

What you really want to use is the past tense, as in "I misunderstood what you said", and that doesn't require any auxiliary verb whatsoever. So just scratch _haft_ and you're good to go:

_Jag missförstod vad du sade._



Zuu said:


> jag trodde att du sade "svenskar talar inte svenska", vilket var roligt, och jag var på väg att saga "men alla har dåliga brytningar om språk på engelska".


I don't know what you're trying to say here. The first part is completely correct (except that _saga_ should be _säga_, but that's probably just a typo or something), but I don't understand what you mean by _alla har dåliga brytningar om språk på engelska_. It translates into "Everyone has bad accents about languages in English".



Zuu said:


> vilket är också sant.


In English, you say "which is also true". In Swedish, you say "which also is true". I don't think there's any particular reason for this, it's just how we do it. So the correct sentence is:

_vilket också är sant._



Zuu said:


> men jo, jag gissar att bara svenskar talar svenska.


The verb _att gissa_ doesn't work quite the same way as the English equivalent "to guess". According to Merriam-Webster, "to guess" can have three possible meanings:


to form an opinion of from little or no evidence
believe, suppose: _I guess you're right_.
to arrive at a correct conclusion about by conjecture, chance, or intuition: _guess the answer._

Only the first and third definitions of "to guess" are the same for _att gissa_. So if you say _Jag gissar att bara svenskar talar svenska_, then it literally means that you're making a guess: "I'm guessing that only Swedish people speak Swedish".

If you want to say "I guess" as in "I believe, I suppose", which is what I assume you mean, then you need to use a different verb, such as _att anta_ (which means "to suppose"). So the correct sentence is:

_Jag antar att bara svenskar talar svenska._



Zuu said:


> ändå jag studerar svenska.


This should be _ändå studerar jag svenska_.

In Swedish, there are lots of situations in which the normal subject-verb-object word order is changed. This is one of them: you've moved the adverb.

Normally, you place adverbs after the verb. However, in both English and Swedish, it is possible - though a bit unusual - to place the adverb elsewhere:

_Han sprang snabbt_ = "He ran quickly".
_Snabbt sprang han_ = "Quickly he ran".

As you can see, the latter case puts more emphasis on the adverb. This is exactly what you're doing in your sentence; you want to emphasise the fact that you study Swedish in spite of something that's been mentioned earlier, so you put _ändå_ in the beginning of the sentence rather than after the verb.

As you can also see, however, doing this in Swedish means that you have to reverse the word order; instead of _han sprang_, you now have _sprang han_. Similarly, in your sentence, _jag studerar_ becomes _studerar jag_:

_Ändå studerar jag svenska._



Zuu said:


> fan, blir mitt svenska bättre?


Remember when I said that _svenska_ was an uncountable noun, so you treat it as if the gender was neuter? Well, it's no longer an uncountable noun because you applied a determiner to it (a possessive determiner), so its real gender now applies! Since _svenska_ is common gender, you should be saying _min svenska_ instead of _mitt svenska_:

_Fan, blir min svenska bättre?_



Zuu said:


> naturligtvis, jag är säker att mitt grammatik är mycket dåligt.


_Naturligtvis_ is an adverb just like _ändå_, so the same rule applies: if you move it to the front of the sentence, you have to reverse the word order (_jag är naturligtvis säker [...]_ becomes _naturligtvis är jag säker [...]_).

The adjective "sure" does translate into _säker_, but when you want to say that you are sure of something, then you have to add the preposition _på_:

_Jag är säker_ = "I am sure".
_Jag är säker på det_ = "I am sure of it".

You're not just saying that you're sure; you're saying you're sure of a specific thing (namely, that your grammar is poor); therefore, you have to say _jag är säker på att..._

Lastly, _grammatik_ is common gender, not neuter; therefore, _mitt grammatik är mycket dåligt_ should be _min grammatik är mycket dålig_. Do note, however, that _grammatik_ is usually an uncountable noun; it's not now, however, because you added a determiner to it.

The correct sentence is:

_Naturligtvis är jag säker på att min grammatik är mycket dålig._



Zuu said:


> jag tror ändå att spanska är skitigt


As explained earlier, you should use _jag tycker_ instead of _jag tror_, because you're expressing an opinion as opposed to an uncertain belief (right?); also, _skitigt_ means "grimy, dirty" and is an inappropriate adjective.



Zuu said:


> åh, tack! tycker jag, haha.


Here, you want to use _tror jag_ instead of _tycker jag_, because now you're expressing uncertainty as opposed to an opinion.



Zuu said:


> Google Translate är inte väldigt bra ... men det är bra för mig, jag gissar.


_Det är bra för mig_ means "it's good for me". I'm not sure what you intended this to mean, so I can't correct this sentence for you, but I don't think you wanted to say that Google Translate is healthy/beneficial for you.

As explained earlier, _jag gissar_ should be _antar jag_; you need to reverse the word order, and here _gissa_ doesn't mean the same thing as "guess".

_Google Translate är inte väldigt bra... men det är bra för mig, antar jag._



Zuu said:


> och jo, jag visste om engelskan tinget, men jag pratar inte mycket med svenskar. :(


While _ting_ does mean "thing", it's a very rare word; the most commonly used word is _sak_, and _grej_ in informal settings. Here, _grej_ is the only alternative that really fits, because you're being quite informal ("I knew about the English thing"). 

As you probably know, we use compound nouns a lot in Swedish; while you say "the English thing", we say "the Englishthing". In fact, splitting compounds when you're not supposed to is one of the most common (and annoying!) errors people make around here. So _engelskan tinget_ is definitely out of the question.

The correct way of phrasing it would be either _jag visste om engelskgrejen_ or _jag visste om engelskagrejen_ or _jag visste om engelska-grejen_.

When you form a compound and one of the words ends with -a, the -a ending typically disappears (assuming it's not the last word, of course). For example:

_flicka_ = "girl".
_kläder_ = "clothes".
_flickkläder_ = "girls' clothing".

But for some reason, when it comes to the names of languages (_engelska, svenska, franska_ etc), people tend to overlook this rule. In fact, we can't even agree on how to say "English teacher"; should it be _engelsklärare_ or _engelskalärare_? The general consensus is that _engelsklärare_ is better because it follows the established rule, but languages evolve over time, as you know...

Then there's also the option of hyphenating. Normally we don't use hyphens when we compound, but there are a few exceptions where it's needed for clarity. I'm sceptical as to whether this is one of those cases, but my gut tells me it looks good with a hyphen.

So yes, I'd say all three of _engelskgrejen_, _engelskagrejen_ and _engelska-grejen_ would be acceptable under ordinary circumstances (a linguist or Swedish teacher would probably be of a different opinion; sorry I can't be of much help here).

So that leaves us with something along these lines:

_Och jo, jag visste om engelska-grejen, men jag pratar inte mycket med svenskar._



Zuu said:


> VPLJ, jo, svenska är ganska lätt. är lättare än Ryska, naturligtvis.


There's no subject in the second sentence; add _det_ and you're done. Oh, and no capital R.

_Det är lättare än ryska, naturligtvis._



Zuu said:


> kanske MD eller jag kunde lära dig några.


_Några vad?_ The word _några_ means "some, a few", but you're referring to the Swedish language; you can't teach someone "a few Swedish". You can, however, teach someone "a little Swedish", so you need to use _lite_, which means "a little".

_Kanske MD eller jag kunde lära dig lite._



Zuu said:


> jag är inte valdig bra på att prata svenska men ... jag vet inte.


_Valdig_ isn't a word; you're thinking of _väldigt_.

_Jag är inte väldigt bra på att prata svenska men..._



Zuu said:


> p.s. använda Google Translate


_Använda_ is the infinitive, but you should be using the imperative, which is _använd_.

_Använd Google Translate._



Zuu said:


> i know this is hypocritical since English is very guilty of this, but the flexibility of Swedish's prepositions confounds me.


How so?


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## Zeph

Having read your post, MD, you're really selling Swedish to me, you know? It looks excellent.


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## Tarvos

I recognise half the Swedish things... We do them the same way here, haha... Pity I don't know the words.


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## Minish

Dannichu said:


> Oh my god. I remember the French oral like it was yesterday. O.O
> I remember picking, for reasons unknown even to myself, the topic of health to talk about, and I basically said that everything was "bon pour ma coer".


Oh god, me too... I have literally _never_ been more nervous for anything else in my life. It wasn't even that important, I think I got a C overall for GCSE and never did any more, but it was _so_ nerve-wracking.

We didn't get to pick our topics! We had to learn about six and then three would be chosen at random. So basically we needed to memorise double the amount of work required just in case it came up. :| I recall a lot about... going on holiday. And playing football last weekend with my imaginary brother.


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## Zuu

första, jag riktigt gillade posten. it was well thought-out and very useful. tack så mycket. jag antar jag göra mer fel än jag borde, haha, men jag känner sig jag tala det mycket bättre nu, särskilt med din hjälp. 



Music Dragon said:


> You're doing fairly well considering you're not taking classes or anything, Zuu. (Or are you?)


nej, inga klasser (kurser?). men tack, jag älskar absolut att prata på svenska och språket sig också. 



> How so?


i guess i don't have good reason for it. _på_ annoys me sometimes, and i have basically never seen _vid_, but aside from that it's not bad. idk :V


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## Tarvos

J'envisage d'aller etudier (ou, plus accuratement, re-etudier) francais, mais dans un niveau avancé. 

Mais j'ai aussi l'idee d'apprendre une langue differente. J'ai pas fait mon choix.

Il y a une personne qui peut m'aider avec ça?


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## @lex

Swedish yay! Lemme dissect a post, too! Unlike MD, I actually can claim to be a Swedish teacher (well, I study to be one... I'm not quite there yet).



Zuu said:


> första, jag riktigt gillade posten.


First, you want to say _först_. _Första_ is the definite article, litterally meaning _the first_.

This is generally not enough, however. We don't preface sentences with just _först_ - you need an expression similar to _first of all_ or _to begin with_. These translate to _först av allt_ and _till att börja med_, respectively.

As for the second clause, _really_ in this case translates to _verkligen_. The word _riktigt_ is closer to _real_. Then, the adverb comes after the verb: _jag gillade verkligen posten_. Swedish word order gets wonky, but as this is a prototypical clause, you use the standard SVAO word order.



Zuu said:


> jag antar jag göra mer fel än jag borde, haha, men jag känner sig jag tala det mycket bättre nu, särskilt med din hjälp.


Here, it's _"jag antar *att* jag gör *fler* fel än jag borde"_. Simply, _att_ means _that_: _I guess *that* I'm..._.

While you generally can use _mer_ instead of _fler_ (not the other way around, though), it could be good to note the difference between them. _Fler_ is when it's about more of something countable, while _mer_ is more of something uncountable. Both obviously translate to _more_.

Jag vill studera mer svenska.​_I want to study more Swedish.​_
Vill du ha mer kaffe?​_Do you want more coffee?​_
_Swedish_ and _coffee_ both being uncountables.

Jag vill studera fler ämnen.​_I want to study more subjects.​_
Vill du ha fler kakor?
_Do you want more cookies?_​
_Subjects_ and _cookies_ being countables. And let's add another example for good measure:

Vill du ha en kaka till?
_Do you want one more cookie?_​
When it's about _(number) more (countable)_, we don't use the word _fler_ at all. We say _(nummer) till_ which can only be translated as _(number) more_, while clearly literally meaning _(number) to_. It's probably derived from "do you want to add one cookie to the total?"



Zuu said:


> nej, inga klasser (kurser?). men tack, jag älskar absolut att prata på svenska och språket sig också.


The word you're looking for here would be _lektioner_ - _lessons_. _Klass_ only means _group_, as in the ones who go to a class, or _year_, as in which year they're in.

Klass 9 är trevliga på lektionerna!
_(the pupils in) Year 9 are nice in class!_​
And _kurs_ is still _course_. _Attend a course_ - _gå/läsa en kurs_.

The rest is good until "språket sig". You either want to say _själva språket_ (_the language itself_) or "språket i sig" (_the language in itself_).

Finally, you should begin every sentence with a capital letter :p


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## Zuu

woho, mer hjälp! the bit about "(nummer) till" is quite interesting, and i knew _språket sig_ was wonky. yay!


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## Sesquipedalian!

I am currently relatively fluent in varying degrees in the following languages:

- British English
- Canadian English
- American English
- Australian English
- New Zealand English
- South African English
- Guyanese English
- Indian English

And then there is French and Hindi where I am more so a horrible Babelfish multitranslation in either.


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